Chapter VII · (continued 2)

“Oh! thank God!” she said, “that I am able to support him and the children. Perhaps ere long my prayers will be heard, and I shall be happy again.”

But Roony was still drinking steadily; even now, as he ate the cold victuals, he was barely able to sit on the chair, and so the poor woman did not venture to show herself. Next day, however, the fifth since she left home, the longed-for

“O wife!” he exclaimed, rising to meet her, “’tis an age since I laid eyes on you. Where have you been?” Then his countenance suddenly growing dark as a thundercloud, “but, by heaven! what’s happened? How came those bruises on your face? Somebody has ill-treated you! Tell me the villain’s name, that I may take his heart’s blood.”

“I’ll never tell his name,” answered Helen, in a low but firm voice. “Never!”

For about a minute Roony gazed on her in silence; the mournful, the shocking truth seemed to be gradually dawning upon him. “Oh! is it possible? Could I have done it—done such a wicked, brutal thing?” he asked himself. Then, falling on his knees, he bathed her feet with bitter tears. Helen wept also, while the children ceased their gambols and wondered what was the matter. But presently the wife bade him rise, then, twining her arms round his neck, gave him a tender embrace, by which he knew that he was forgiven. And now for a brief half-hour, oh! how happy he was, and how happy she was! During the dark days which followed Helen often looked back to those fleeting moments; ’twas like a gleam of sunshine flung across a scathed and desolate landscape.

“Now, husband dear,” she said after he had fondled her a little while, “let me put things to rights.” Whereupon she took her broom, swept the floor, and sprinkled it with clean sand; the pictures were dusted; the clock set agoing; the rosebush watered; nor was the poor goat forgotten. And delighted, indeed, Pg 333 was the half-starved creature to see her again.

“Helen!” exclaimed Mike, while she was thus employed, “a wife like you is a priceless treasure. Would to Heaven I had listened to you Christmas morning! What a different man I’d be now!”

“Well, love, all is bright once more,” answered Helen, cheerily. He made no response save a deep sigh.

“Why, husband dear, what troubles you?” she asked, her look of joy vanishing in a moment.

“No slave was ever bound by such chains as bind me,” he groaned, dropping his forehead in his hands. “And it all comes from that one fatal drink.”

“Well, pray, dear, pray to God, and I will pray with you.”

“Too late! The craving for liquor which seizes me at times is irresistible; ’tis seizing me now—the demon!”

“O my Saviour!” cried Helen, trembling and turning pale. The words had hardly left her lips when the door opened and a strange face—at least it was new to her—peeped in.

“Time!” spoke the chief of the Black-eye Club in a voice which caused Roony to start to his feet.

“Begone!” cried Helen, advancing boldly toward the intruder.

“Time!” he repeated, now holding up a pistol. But, nothing daunted, she was about to try and close the door on him, when her husband slipped past, and ere she could recover from her amazement they were both beyond the rock and half way to the grog-shop.

That night the poor woman remained in the shanty, watching, and weeping, and praying. But her husband did not come back till sunrise; and then he was so crazy

But let us be brief with our story. Why linger over poor Helen’s misery? Why tell of all the brutal treatment she suffered?

Month after month rolled by. Spring came; summer followed spring. Yet there was no change for the better in Mike. His shanty, once the prettiest and cleanest of all the shanties on Manhattan Island, grew to be the dirtiest and most forlorn-looking. The door was kicked off its hinges, ugly rags and papers fluttered in the broken windows, and occasionally the Black-eye Club assembled on the rock, Pg 334 making it the scene of a drunken revel. But brave, faithful Helen continued to visit her children every evening after dark, carrying them food and clothing. She would not remove them from the spot which she still called home, for she hoped that the sight of the little innocents would sooner or later call her husband back to his old self again. And every day Helen went to St. Paul’s church and made the Stations of the Cross; this was her favorite devotion. “And if my Saviour suffered so much,” she would say, “oh! surely, I can bear my load.” Yet there were moments when she seemed well-nigh ready to sink under it. Ay, more than once Hope wrestled with Despair; but Hope always came off victorious.

If the wife’s faith was still glowing, if her trust in God continued strong as ever, nevertheless in one respect a woful change appeared in her. Oh! sad was the havoc which this year of grief, of cruel ill-treatment wrought on her once bright and lovely face! ’Twas as if a coarse hand had rubbed off the delicate tints of that sweet picture, and left behind, not the ruins of her beauty, but the ruins of those ruins.

And now in time’s monotonous circle winter is come round again; another Christmas is at hand. Evergreens and toys, laughing children and good-humored parents, with well-filled purses, all tell it to you. And papa and mamma, as they dash hither and thither in their jingling sleighs, doubt not but everybody else is happy too: Santa Claus will visit every home; Santa Claus will fill every stocking. Why, who could help feeling merry at this holy season?—unless, perhaps, the turkeys. Yes, it is Christmas Eve.

She went; she made anew the stations of the Cross, and said, as she had so often said before, “If my Saviour suffered so much, oh! surely I can bear my load.” As she breathed these words to herself the ugly black-and-blue marks which disfigured her seemed to fade away, a glow of heaven shone in her face, and for a moment, one brief moment, she became once more the beautiful Helen—Helen, “the Belle of the Shanties,” as Mrs. McGowan used to call her—then suddenly she gave a start and the mien of rapture changed to a look of wonder and alarm. Who had spoken her name? There was nobody near; who could it be? While Helen was gazing about her, she heard the voice again. “Who is calling me?” she asked, her heart now throbbing violently. The words were scarcely uttered when for the third time, and more distinctly, “Helen!” sounded in her ear. “It is Michael!” she exclaimed, hastening to the door. “Yes, it is he calling Pg 335 me.” But ere she passed out of the church she broke off a sprig of evergreen and dipped it into the holy-water font. Then hiding it in her bosom, so that the angry wind might not snatch it away, she sped homeward on winged feet.

But ’twas no easy matter to get to the rock at this hour with her poor bruised eyes and in such a driving storm. Yet she did find the way. And up the rude path she climbed with marvellous agility; ’twas as though an invisible hand were leading her on.

The sight which Helen beheld on entering the shanty might have appalled any heart but hers. Her husband, his face streaming with blood, was engaged in a deadly struggle with a horrible-looking being much larger than himself, who seemed striving to make him drink from a cup which he pressed to his lips. “O Ellen!” cried Michael in a tone of despair, “save me! save me!” Quick she flew towards him, stretching forth at the same time the branch of evergreen. In another instant ’twas in his hand; then, just as he grasped it, his strange adversary uttered a demoniac cry and the cup fell to the floor, shattered in many pieces.

“Oh! I am saved,” exclaimed Roony—“saved! saved! Thank God!” But while his joyful words were ringing through the house, the fiend turned upon his deliverer and out into the black night Helen was driven. Vainly she struggled; a powerful hand, which seemed mailed in iron, thrust her out, and presently, when released from its ruthless grip, she found herself blindly groping here and there in the darkness. Round and round the house she wandered—near it always, yet never finding it.

And during these sad moments,

* * * * *

Next morning—sweet Christmas morning—the sun rose in a cloudless sky; and as its bright beams flashed from window to window, from spire to spire, every object, the humblest, the least beautiful, became suddenly transformed into a thing of beauty. Ay, even those two icy hands peeping above the snow hard by Mike Roony’s shanty door sparkle as if they were covered with gems and have a golden halo round them. They were clasped as if in prayer, and when poor Mike discovered them he cried aloud: “Oh! she prayed for me to the last; she prayed for me to the last!”

His wail was heard at the next rock, and far beyond it. Then a crowd began to collect, a very large crowd; for Helen was known to many, and her husband was not the only one who shed tears over her remains this bright Christmas morning.

“I had a feeling that something was going wrong,” spoke Mrs. McGowan. Then, when Roony told of the infernal being who had attacked him, and how he had been rescued by the blessed evergreen which Helen had brought, the good woman solemnly shook her head, and whispered: “This house ought to be exorcised—indeed it ought.”

“Well, one thing I vow by all Pg 336 that’s holy,” ejaculated Mike, crossing himself and lifting his voice so that the crowd might hear him—“I vow never again to touch liquor—never, never, never!”

“I join you!” exclaimed a bystander.

“So do I!”

“And I too!”

“And I!” shouted a number of voices. And those who spoke were members of the notorious Black-eye Club. Then they all knelt around the body and swore, hand-in-hand together, never to drink another drop of intoxicating spirits.

And thus by Helen’s death many sinners were converted, many a drunkard’s home made happy again; for the ways of the Lord are mysterious. Good is not seldom wrought out only through tears and suffering. Oh! who will say it was not well for Helen to die?

But poor Mike was inconsolable. He who had once been so blithe and frolicsome now spoke scarcely a word. Days and weeks rolled by, yet he did not change. We may pity him indeed! There was no light in the window now to welcome him from afar as he trudged back from his work in the dusk. And when he sat down to warm himself by the stove, instead of lighting his pipe as of yore and falling into a pleasant doze, he became strangely wakeful.

Then the spectre remorse would glide out of some shadowy corner and whisper bitter words in his ear. If at times he succeeded in silencing its voice, and would give himself up to a reverie of other days, when this miserable shanty

Then back remorse would creep and whisper: “You beat her—you broke her heart—you killed her—you did—you did!”

And one evening, while these torturing words were wringing his soul, he threw up his right hand—the hand which had struck her so often—and groaned aloud: “Oh! this is hell. Where’s the axe?”

Forlorn wretch! well it was that as he bared his arm and clutched the axe—ay, well it was that at that very moment the minister of God appeared to check the rash deed he contemplated, to speak soothing words, to save him, perhaps, from madness.

And as from this hour forth a new life began for Michael Roony, we end our tale with the closing advice which the priest addressed him. “My dear friend,” he said, “do not weep any more, for tears will not bring back your wife. There is nothing in this world so vain as regret. Therefore cease to mourn; strive your best to be cheerful.” Then pointing to little Mike and Nell, who were playing at his feet, “work hard, too, for these children whom she bore you. For their sake, as well as your own, keep true to the pledge of temperance, and so live here on earth that one day you may meet again your dear Helen in heaven.”

Pg 337

SIENA.

Cor magis Sena pandit.

The railway from Empoli to the south passes through a rough, hilly country, following its sinuosities, spanning the valleys on gigantic arches, or plunging through the tunnelled mountains. One tunnel is a mile long—through the hill of San Dalmazzo; and when you issue from it, you see before you another hill, on which rises, stage after stage, the strange, mediæval city of Siena, to the height of nearly a thousand feet above the level of the sea. It was rather a disappointment not to enter it, as carriages from Florence do, by the celebrated Porta Camollia, where the traveller is greeted by the cordial inscription, Cor magis Sena pandit—Siena opens her gates even more willingly than her heart—testifying to the hospitable character of the inhabitants. The city is built on three hills, with deep ravines between them. These hills are crossed by three main streets, meeting at the Piazza del Campo, around which the city radiates like a star. There is scarcely a level spot in the whole place. Even the central square descends like the hollow of a cone. Nothing could be more favorable to the picturesque. The old brick walls of the thirteenth century, with their fortifications and thirty-eight gate-ways, go straggling up the heights. Narrow, lane-like streets, inaccessible to carriages, rush headlong down into deep ravines, sometimes through gloomy arches, the very houses clinging to the steep sides with a giddy, top-heavy air. On one of these three hills stands St. Catharine of Siena. Palaces, as well as churches, adorn all the heights—palaces grim and time-worn, that bear old, historic names, famed in the great contests between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, in which live, secluded in their own dim halls, the aristocratic owners, keeping up their ancient customs, proud as the imperial Ghibellines or lordly Guelphs from whom they sprang. Amid all the towers, and domes, and palaces, rises, from the central square, light and slender, the tall, arrow-like Torre del Mangia, which shoots up to a prodigious height into the sapphire sky, crowned with battlements, as if to defend the city against the spirits of the air.

Yes, Siena is singularly picturesque and striking as no other city in Italy is, but sad and melancholy with its recollections of past grandeur. It cannot forget the time when it sent forth its legions to triumph over the Florentines, and had two hundred thousand inhabitants. Now it has only about a tenth of that number. Once it was great in war. It was a leader in art. Eight popes sprang from its territory, among whom were Pius II., the poet, diplomatist, and lover of art, from the Piccolomini family; the great Hildebrand, so prominent in the history of the church; and Pg 338 Alexander III., who deposed Frederick Barbarossa, and gave his name to a city—styled by Voltaire himself the benefactor of the human race. And like so many stars that blaze in the heaven of the Italian Church—nay, the church universal—are the Sienese saints, wondrous in life and glorified by art.

The first place into which the traveller inevitably drifts, if he attempts to explore the city alone, is the Piazza del Campo, now called, of course, Vittorio Emmanuele, in spite of Dante. This piazza is singularly imposing from its unchanged, mediæval aspect. It slopes away like an amphitheatre, being intended for public games and spectacles; Murray says, like a shell. Yes, a shell that whispers of past storms—of the tempestuous waves that have swept over the city; for it has witnessed many a popular insurrection, many a struggle between the nobles and people. Among the interesting associations we recall the haughty Ghibelline leader, Provenzano Salvani, whose name, as Dante says:

It was here, when a friend of his, taken prisoner by Charles of Anjou, lay under penalty of death, unless his ransom of a thousand florins in gold should be paid within a certain time, that Provenzano, the first citizen of the republic, the conqueror of Monte Aperti, unable to pay so large a sum, humbled himself so far as to spread a carpet on this piazza, on which he sat down to solicit contributions from the public.

So stanch a friend would seem to have deserved a less terrible fate. On the disastrous day of Colle he was taken by the Florentines, who cut off his head, and carried it around the battle-field, fastened on a lance.

On one side of the piazza is the massive Palazzo Pubblico, bristling with battlements. On its front blazes the holy name of Jesus, held up by St. Bernardin of Siena for the reverence of the whole world. The busy throng beneath looks up in its toilsome round, and goes on, the better for a fleeting thought. Below is a pillar with the wolf of pagan Rome that bore Siena. From this palace rises the beautiful tower del Mangia, seen far and wide over the whole country, so called from the automaton which used to come forth at mid-day, like the Moor at Venice, to strike the hours. This figure was to the Sienese what Pasquino was to Rome. To it were confided all the epigrams of the city wits; but, alas for them! one day, when it came forth to do its duty, a spring gave way, and it fell to the ground and was dashed in pieces. This tower commands an admirable view. North, the country looks barren, but the slopes of Chianti are celebrated for their wines, and Monte Maggio is covered with forests. South and west, it is fresher and more smiling, but leads to the fatal marshes of Maremma. Santa Fiora, the most productive mountain, annually yields vast quantities of umber. The happy valleys are full of olives and wheat-fields. Farther Pg 339 off, to the south, the volcanic summits of Radicofani, associated with Boccaccio’s tales, blacken the horizon. To the east everything is bleak and dreary, the whole landscape of a pale, sickly green.

At the foot of the tower is a beautiful votive chapel of the Virgin, built in the fourteenth century after a pestilence which carried off eighty thousand people from Siena and its environs. It is like an open porch resting on sculptured pillars. Over the altar within are statues and a fresco of the Madonna, before which are flowers and lamps burning in the bright sunlight—all open to the air, as if to catch a passing invocation from the lips of those who might otherwise spare no thought, amid their toils, for heaven.

Siena is peculiarly the city of Mary. Before the great battle with the Florentines,

the Sienese solemnly placed their city under the protection of the Virgin, and vowed, if victorious, to regard her as the Sovereign Lady of the land, from whom they would henceforth hold it as her vassals. After their triumph they came to lay their spoils at her feet, and had her painted as Our Lady of Victory, throned like a queen, with the Infant standing on her knee. When Duccio, some years later, finished his Madonna, he wrote beneath it: Mater sancta Dei, sis causa Senis requiei!—Give peace to Siena!—and the painting was transported, amid public rejoicings, to the cathedral. Business was entirely suspended. All the shops were closed. The archbishop, at the head of the clergy and magistrates, accompanied it with a vast procession of people, with lighted tapers in their

This was during the height of Siena’s grandeur, when the wisdom of its laws corresponded to the depth of its religious sentiments, so that, while most of the Italian republics were ruined by intestine commotions between the nobles and people, Siena had the wisdom to modify its constitution in such a way as to admit the representatives of both parties to the government, and so preserve the vigor of the nation. It was thus she was enabled to extend her dominion and win the great victory of Monte Aperti, in which ten thousand Florentines were left dead on the field.

On one side of the piazza is the palace of the Sansedoni, one of the great Ghibelline families belonging to the feudal aristocracy of Siena—a frowning, battlemented palace, with a mutilated tower built by a special privilege in 1215. In it is a chapel in honor of the Beato Ambrogio Sansedoni, a Dominican friar who belonged to this illustrious family. It was he whom Pope Clement IV., after a vain effort to save the unfortunate Conradin of Souabia from death, sent to administer the sacraments and console the young prince in his last moments. Ambrogio distinguished himself as a professor of theology at Paris, Cologne, and Rome.

Close beside the Palazzo Buonsignori, one of the finest in the city, is the house said by tradition to have been inhabited by the unhappy Pia de Tolomei, indebted for her celebrity to Dante, rather than to her misfortunes. He meets her in the milder shades of Purgatory, among those who had by violence Pg 340 died, but who, repenting and forgiving,

Her death was caused by the deadly miasmas of “Maremma’s pestilential fen,” to which her cruel husband had banished her.

It was a member of the Tolomei family—the Beato Bernardino—who, in the fourteenth century, founded the Olivetan Order. He was previously a professor at the university of Siena, but, being struck blind while discussing some philosophical subject in his lecture-room, he resolved, though he soon recovered his sight, to embrace the religious life; and when he next appeared in his chair, instead of resuming his philosophical discussions, he astonished his audience by insisting on the vanity of all earthly acquirements, and the importance of the only knowledge that can save the soul. Several of his pupils were so impressed by his words that they followed him when he retired to one of the family estates not far from Siena, which he called Monte Oliveto, whence the name of the order. Bernardino fell a victim to his zeal in attending to the sick in the time of a great plague. The convent he founded became a magnificent establishment, with grounds luxuriantly cultivated, a church adorned by the arts, and apartments so numerous that the Emperor Charles V., and his train of five thousand, all lodged there at once.

The Palazzo Bandanelli, where Pope Alexander III. was born, is gloomy and massive as a prison, with iron gratings at the arched windows, brick walls black with age, from which project great iron rings, and on the doors immense knockers of wrought iron, made III. was enlightened in his views. It was in 1167 he declared, in the name of a council, that all Christians ought to be exempted from servitude.

To go back to the Piazza del Campo. Before the Sansedoni palace is the Fonte Gaja—so called from the joyful acclamations of the people, when water was brought into the square in 1343. It is surrounded by an oblong basin of white marble, elegantly sculptured by Giacomo della Quercia, to whom was henceforth given the name of Del Fonte.

Siena, being on a height, was, from the first, obliged to provide water for its inhabitants at great expense. Aqueducts were constructed in the time of the Romans. But a still grander work was achieved in the middle ages, when water was brought from the neighboring mountains by an aqueduct about twenty miles long, that passed beneath the city, giving rise, perhaps, to the derisive report in Dante’s time that the hill was tunnelled in search of the river Diana:

These vast subterranean works so excited the admiration of Charles V. that he said Siena was more wonderful below ground than above. Now there are three hundred and fifty-five wells in the city, and eighteen fountains. The deep well in the cloister of the Carmine is called the Pozzo di Diana.

The most noted of the fountains is Fonte Branda, whose waters were so famous in Dante’s time for their sweetness and purity that he makes Adamo of Brescia, the coiner of counterfeit money, exclaim, amid Pg 341 the flames of the Inferno, that to behold the instigators of his crime undergoing a like torture would be sweeter to him than the cool waters of Fonte Branda:

This fountain has also been celebrated by Alfieri, who often came to Siena to visit his friend, Francesco Gori, with whom he remained months at a time. He liked the character of the people, and said, when he went away, that he left a part of his heart behind. And yet Dante, perhaps because a Florentine, accused the Sienese of being light and vain:

Formerly, if not still, giddy people in Tuscany were often asked if they had been drinking water from the Fonte Branda, as if that would account for any excess.

The Sienese are proud of the fame and antiquity of this fount, which is known to have existed in 1081. It flows at the very bottom of one of the deep ravines which makes Siena so peculiar, between two precipitous hills, one crowned by the Duomo, and the other by the church of St. Dominic, and you look from one to the other in silent wonder. The whole quarter is densely populated. The people are called Fontebrandini—mostly, as five centuries ago, tanners, dyers, and fullers, who are reputed to be proud, and are to Siena what the Trasteverini are to Rome. The streets around diverge from a market-place, on one side of which is the fount under a long, open arcade of stone, of immense thickness, built against the hillside. You go down to a paved court, as to something

An old Sienese romance is connected with the Fonte Branda. Cino da Pistoja, a poet and celebrated professor of jurisprudence at Siena in the fourteenth century, whose death Petrarch laments in a sonnet, promised his daughter, a young lady of uncommon beauty, to any one of his pupils who should best solve a knotty law-question. It was a young man, misshapen in form, to whom the prize was adjudged, and the poor girl, in her horror, threw herself into the Fonte Branda. Her suitor, sensible of the value of the prize, plunged in after her, and not only saved her life, but fortunately succeeded in winning her affections.

Turning to the right, and ascending the Costa dei Tintori, you come in a few moments to the house of St. Catharine of Siena, once the shop of her father, a dyer, but now a series of oratories and chapels, sanctified by holy memories and adorned by art. It is built of brick, with two arched galleries, one above Pg 342 the other, of a later period. Sposæ XPI. Katharinæ Domvs is on the front, with a small head of the saint graven in marble, and another tablet styling her the Seraphic Catharine. Below hang tanned skins, probably for sale. The memories of the place are truly seraphic, but the odors would by no means be considered so by those who do not believe in the dignity and sacredness of labor; for the whole quarter—at least, when we were there—was redolent of tan. Skins hung on all the houses. Tan-cakes for fuel were displayed on shelves for sale at every door. Everybody seemed industrious. There was none of the far niente we like to associate with Italy. It was a positive grievance to find great heaps of tan around the Fonte Branda, so poetical to us, because associated with the Divine Poet. But it was still harder to have the same odors follow us to the very house of the seraphic St. Catharine, the mystic Bride of Christ. Very little change can have taken place during the last five centuries in the neighborhood where bloomed this fair lily of the church, and, in one sense, this is a satisfaction. The house itself is of the most touching interest. There are the stairs Catharine, when a child, used to ascend, with an Ave at every step, and over which the legend says she was so often borne by the angels. Everywhere through the passages are the emblematic lily and heart. An oratory has been made of the kitchen which became to Catharine a very sanctuary, instead of a place of low cares, where she served Christ under the form of her father, the Blessed Virgin under that of her mother, and the disciples in the persons of her brothers and sisters. Her father’s Bottega has also been St. Christina at Pisa. In these various oratories are a profusion of paintings by Sodoma, Vanni, and other eminent artists. Del Pacchia has attained the very perfection of feminine beauty in his painting of St. Catharine’s visit to the shrine of St. Agnes of Monte Pulciano—a genuine production of Christian inspiration. Salimbeni represents her calm amid the infuriated, ungrateful Florentines after her return from Avignon; and Sebastian Folli, her appearance before Gregory XI.

But the most sacred part of the house is her chamber, a little, dark cell about fifteen feet long and eight or nine wide. A bronze door now opens into this sanctuary. Here you are shown the board on which she slept, and other relics of the saint. Here she passed nights in prayer and converse with the angels. Here she scourged her frail body, unconscious that her mother was weeping at the door. Here she wrote the admirable letters so remarkable for their purity and elegance of style. Here took place the divine Sposalizio which, immortalized by art, we see all over Italy. Here, when calumniated by the repulsive object of her heroic charity, she came to pour out her pure soul, that shrank from the foul accusations, before the heavenly Bridegroom; but when he appeared with two crowns, one of gold set with jewels, and the other of thorns, she unhesitatingly chose the latter, pressing it deep into her head, thus Pg 343 becoming for all time, in the world of art, the thorn-crowned Catharine. Pius IX., when he visited the house in 1857, prayed long in this cell, where lived five centuries ago the obscure maiden who, for a time, almost guided St. Peter’s bark.

On St. Catharine’s day the house is richly adorned and resplendent with light. The walls are covered with emblems and verses commemorating her life. The altars have on their finest ornaments. The neighboring streets are strewn with flowers and hung with flags. Hangings are at all the windows. A silver statue of the saint is borne into the street by a long procession of clergy and people. The magistrates join the cortège, and they all go winding up to San Domenico with chants, perfumes, and flowers, where a student from the college Tolomei pronounces a eulogy on their illustrious townswoman. When night comes on, the whole hill around Fonte Branda is illuminated, the rosary is said at the foot of the Madonnas, and hymns are sung in honor of the saint.

St. Catharine’s life, in which everything transcends the usual laws of nature, has been written by her confessor, the Blessed Raymond of Capua—the life of one saint by another. He was not a credulous man easily led away by fantasies of the imagination, but one of incontestable ability and knowledge, who relates what he witnessed in the soul of whose secrets he was the depositary, who scrutinized every prodigy, but only to give additional splendor to the truth.

Raymond was a descendant of Piero della Vigna (the celebrated chancellor of Frederick II.), whose spirit Dante finds imprisoned in “the drear, mystic wood” of the Inferno,

to his horror brings forth at once cries and blood. For nineteen years Raymond was general of the Dominican Order. Pope Urban VI. confided the most delicate and difficult missions to him; called him his eyes, his tongue, his feet, and his hands; held him up to the veneration of princes and people; and would have raised him to the highest dignities but for the opposition of the saint. No one, therefore, could have greater claims to our confidence.

Catharine Benincasa was born in 1347. From her earliest years she was a being apart, and favored with divine communications. Uncomprehended at first by those around her, her home became to her a place of trials. Her parents tried to draw her into the world, and she cut off her long, golden hair. They wished her to marry, and she consecrated herself to a higher love. They then subjected her to household labor, but she found peace in its vulgar details. She worked by day. At night she prayed till lost in ecstasy, insensible to everything earthly. She wished to enter the Third Order of St. Dominic, but was refused admission because she was too young and beautiful. It was only after an illness that made her unrecognizable that she was received; but she continued, like all the members, an inmate of her father’s house. Her soul was peculiarly alive to the sweet harmonies of nature. She liked to go into the woods, at springtime, to listen to the warbling of the birds and watch the mysterious movements of awakening vegetation. She loved the mountain heights, with their wild melodies of winds and Pg 344 torrents, as well as the gentle rustling of the air among the leaves, which seemed to her like nature’s whispered prayer. She said, as she looked at the ant, a thought of God had created it. She loved flowers. She had a taste for music, and liked to sing hymns as she sewed. The name of Mary from her lips was said to leave a singular harmony in the ears of her listeners. She sympathized in every kind of misery to aid it; lent a helping hand to every infirmity, and often served in the hospital, choosing those who were abandoned by the rest of the world as the objects of her care. She rose above the wants of the body. From her childhood she never ate meat, the very odor of which became repugnant to her. For years she subsisted from Ash Wednesday till Whitsuntide solely on the Holy Eucharist, which she received every morning. She entered into all the troubles of the times, diffusing everywhere the pure light of divine charity. Though without human instruction, she astonished the doctors of the church by her profound knowledge of theology. “The purest Italian welled from her untutored lips.” She wrote to popes, cardinals, princes, and republics. Some of her letters are to Sir John Hawkwood, or, as the Italians call him, Giovanni Aguto, the ferocious English condottiere, who stained the flag of the church, and then entered the service of her enemies. She takes a foremost rank among the writers of the age—that of Boccaccio, who lacks her touching grace and simplicity.

Siena, at the time of St. Catharine, was no longer the powerful, united city it had been a century before, but in its turn had become the prey of anarchy and division. The different classes of people were at war

War reigned all over Italy. Milan and all Lombardy were ravaged by the Visconti. Naples was a prey to the excesses caused by Queen Joanna. Florence, that had been devoted to the church, was now governed by the Ghibellines, who went to every extreme against the Guelphs, whose cause, says Dean Milman, “was more (!) than that of the church: it was that of freedom and humanity.” The States of the church were ravaged. Rome itself, widowed and abandoned, “with as many wounds as she had palaces and churches,” as Petrarch says, was in a complete state of anarchy.

Amid all these horrors St. Catharine moved, an angel of peace. God gave her a wonderful power of appeasing private resentments and calming popular tumults. Inveterate enemies clasped hands under her influence. Veteran warriors, and republics themselves, listened respectfully to her voice. She wrote to Pope Gregory XI. at Avignon, pleading the cause of all Italy, and urging him to return to Rome, where he could overrule the passions that agitated the country, and restore dignity to the Apostolic See. Her heart bled at the sight of so much misery and crime. “Peace! peace!” she wrote to the pope—“peace for the love of a crucified God! Do not regard the ignorance and blindness and pride of your children. You will perhaps say you are bound by conscience to recover what belongs to holy church. Alas! I acknowledge it; but when Pg 345 a choice is to be made, it should be of that which is most valuable. The treasure of the church is the Blood of Christ shed for the redemption of souls. This treasure of blood has not been given for temporal dominion, but for the salvation of the human race. If you are obliged to recover the cities and treasures the church has lost, still more are you bound to win back the souls that are the true riches of the church, which is impoverished by losing them. It is better to let go the gold of temporal than the gold of spiritual wealth. You must choose between two evils—that of losing grandeur, power, and temporal prosperity, and the loss of grace in the souls that owe obedience to your Holiness. You will not restore beauty to the church by the sword, by severity and war, but by peaceful measures. You will combat more successfully with the rod of mercy and kindness than of chastisement. By these means you will recover what belongs to you both spiritually and temporally.”

Noble liberty on the part of the dyer’s daughter! And it is to the honor of Pope Gregory that he listened to her with respect. It was time to pour oil on the troubled waters. The proud republic of Florence, after revolting against all spiritual authority, torturing the priests, declaring liberty preferable to salvation, and exciting the papal cities to rebellion, had been laid under an interdict. The people began to feel the disastrous effects on their commerce, and came to solicit Catharine’s intervention with the pope. She went to Avignon, where she made known her mission in a public consistory. “She passed from her father’s shop to the court of princes, from the calmness of solitude to the troubles of factions;

Pope Gregory left her to dictate the terms of peace with the Florentines, though he foresaw their ingratitude. Nay, more: after some hesitation he decided to return to Rome. Nor was St. Catharine the only woman that urged him to do so. St. Bridget of Sweden added the influence of her prophetic voice. Ortensia di Gulielmo, one of the best poets of the day, thus begins a sonnet:

Catharine’s return to Siena was celebrated by festive songs:

On the tomb of Gregory XI., in the church of St. Francesca at Rome, St. Catharine is represented walking before the pope’s mule as he makes his triumphal entrance into the city—a symbol of her guiding influence. From this time she took a prominent part in all the affairs of Italy. But the re-establishment of the papal throne at Rome was her last joy on earth. At the death of Pope Gregory fresh disorders broke out. Catharine’s life slowly wasted away, inwardly consumed, as she declared, for the church. She died in Rome at the age of thirty-three, and lies buried Pg 346 under the high altar of the Minerva, surrounded by lamps and flowers. Her countryman, Pius II., canonized her, not only at the request of the magistrates of Siena, but of several of the sovereigns of Europe.

Siena boasts of other saints: St. Ansano, the first apostle of the country, beheaded on the banks of the Arbia in the time of Diocletian; Galgano di Lolo, who led an angelic life in the mountains; the founder of Monte Oliveto, whose order sheltered Tasso; Ambrogio Sansedoni, the confessor of Conradin, noted for his eloquence and sanctity; St. Bernardin, on whose breast glows the potent Name; Beata Nera Tolomei, noted for her ascetic charity; the poor Pietro Pettinajo, who devoted himself to the plague-stricken in the hospital della Scala; Aldobrandescha Ponzi, who wished to be crowned with thorns like Christ; the Blessed John Colombini, whose only passion was to be like Jesus; and many more besides. But St. Catharine—the heroine of divine love—is the most sublime expression of Sienese piety, and of her is the city especially proud. Her statue was placed by the republic on the front of its glorious cathedral, and she is represented in the gorgeous picture of Pinturicchio in the library, where, as Mrs. Stowe says, “borne in celestial repose and purity amid all the powers and dignitaries of the church, she is canonized as one of those that shall reign and intercede with Christ in heaven.”

From St. Catharine’s house you go winding up under the mulberry-trees to San Domenico, soon leaving the tops of the houses below you. On the way is the place where Catharine, when a child, coming down the hill one evening with SS. Peter, Paul, and John, who seemed with uplifted hands to bless her. Keeping on to the top of the hill, you come to a large green, silent and deserted, before the church. The street that properly leads to it is well named the Via del Paradiso. The church of St. Dominic is vast and imposing, though of severe simplicity of style, offering a marked contrast to the richness of the Duomo. It is shaped like the letter T, without aisles or apsis. Rafters support the vault, but at the entrance to the transepts is an enormous arch of singular boldness. There is something broad and expansive about the atmosphere of the church, as often found in the churches of the Dominican Order. Even with a considerable number of worshippers it would seem solitary. In one of its chapels is a Madonna, celebrated in the history of art, long attributed to Guido of Siena, but now proved to be by Guido di Graziano, a contemporary of Cimabue, whose Madonnas it resembles, with its oblique eyes, large head, and a certain angular stiffness. Among other noted paintings is one of Santa Barbara by Matteo da Siena, very beautiful in expression. She sits, crowned by two angels, with a palm in one hand and a tower-like tabernacle in the other, in which the Host is exposed above a chalice. SS. Magdalen and Catharine are at her side.

A domed chapel, protected by a balustrade of alabaster, has been built on the east side of the church, in which is enshrined the head of St. Catharine—evidently the most Pg 347 frequented part of the church, from the numerous seats before it, mostly with coats of arms and carved backs. Framed prayers, as is common in Italy, are chained to a prie-Dieu—one to St. Catherine with the anthem: Regnum mundi et omnem ornatum sæculi contempsi propter amorem Domini mei Jesu Christi, quem vidi, quem amavi, in quem credidi, quem dilexi. Three lamps were burning before the relics of St. Catharine. The walls are covered with exquisite paintings by Sodoma, which were lit up by the morning sun. Nothing could be more lovely than St. Catharine swooning at the Saviour’s apparition—a figure full of divine languor, grace, and softness. Two nuns tenderly sustain her. Her stigmata are radiant. An angel bears a lily. The whole painting is delicate, ethereal, and heavenly as a vision. It is on the gospel side of the altar; on the other side she kneels between two nuns with her eyes raised to heaven, where, above the Virgin and Child, appears the Padre Eterno. Angels bear the cross and crown of thorns. Another brings the Host. A death’s head and lily are at her feet. The whole is of wonderful beauty.

On the left wall, as you enter the chapel, is painted the execution of a young knight, beheaded at Siena for some slight political offence. St. Catharine went to comfort him in his despair, and induced him to receive the sacraments. She even accompanied him to the block, where his last words were “Jesus” and “Catharine,” leaving her inundated with his blood, but in a state of ecstasy that rendered her insensible to everything but his eternal welfare. The odor of his blood seemed to intoxicate her.

On the pavement is traced in the marble Adam amid the animals in Paradise, among whom is the unicorn, the ancient emblem of chastity.

At the extreme end of the church is the Chapel delle Volte, to which you ascend by six steps. Over the door is this inscription:

Behold this place, sacred and venerable among all on earth; here holy Catharine rejoicing often beheld, wondrous to say, the Christ, her spouse. But thou, whosoever approachest, here pour forth thy prayers, to venerate the holy one who bore the sacred stigmata, the insignia of divine love.

This chapel, the scene of so many of St. Catharine’s mystic visions, is long and narrow, with one Pg 348 window. The arches are strewn with gilt stars on a blue ground. The floor is paved with tiles, with tablets here and there. On one, before the altar, are the words: Cathâ. cor mutat XPUS—Christ changes the heart of Catharine; for it was here she underwent that miraculous change of heart which transformed her life. Our Saviour himself appeared to her, surrounded by light, and gave her a new heart, which filled her with ecstatic joy, and inspired a love for all mankind.

Over the plain altar is an authentic portrait of St. Catharine by the poetic Andrea Vanni, a pupil of Sano di Pietro. He was one of her disciples and correspondents, though a Capitano del Popolo. He painted this portrait in 1367, while she was in an ecstatic state in this very chapel. It represents her with delicate features, a thin, worn face, and must have been a charming picture originally, but it is now greatly deteriorated.

On one of the pillars of the chapel is the inscription: Catâ. cruce erogat XPO—Catharine bestows the cross on Christ; referring to the silver cross she one day gave a beggar in this church, which was afterwards shown her set with precious stones. And on another pillar is: Catâ. vesti induit XPUM—Catharine clothes Christ with her garment; in memory of the tunic she here gave our Saviour under the form of a beggar, who showed it to her some hours after, radiant with light and embroidered with pearls—acts of charity full of significance. Three lovely little paintings by Beccafumi, at the Belle Arti, represent the three mystic scenes commemorated in this chapel.

In the adjoining convent, now a school-house, lived for a time St. II. blessed the standard of the Crusaders.

On our way to the Porta Camollia we turned down at the left, by a steep, paved way, to the church of Fonte Giusta, erected in memory of a victory over the Florentines. It is a small brick church with four small windows, four pillars to which are attached four bronze angels holding four bronze candlesticks, and on the walls hang four paintings of note. One is a beautiful coronation of the Virgin with four saints, by Fungai. Then there is a Visitation by Anselmi, in which two majestic women look into each other’s eyes, as if to fathom each the other’s soul. In an arch of the right aisle is the sibyl of Peruzzi—a noble figure—said to have been studied by Raphael when Agostino Chigi, the famous banker of the Farnesina palace (a Sienese by birth), commissioned him to paint the celebrated sibyls of the Della Pace at Rome—sibyls that have all the grandeur of Michael Angelo, and the grace that Raphael alone could give.

But what particularly brought us to this church was to see the Madonna of Fonte Giusta, to which Columbus made a pilgrimage after the discovery of America, and presented his sword, shield (a round one), and a whale’s bone, which are still suspended over the entrance. The Madonna turns her fair, sweet face towards you, while the Child has his eyes turned towards his mother, with his hands crossed on his breast. Both have on silver crowns, and pearls around their necks. The picture is in a frame Pg 349 of cherubs’ heads, surrounded by delicate arabesques. Beneath is the inscription:

Here is tranquil repose; here safety and sweet consolation; here is hope for the wretched, and for the guilty an unfailing refuge.

Columbus’ devotion to the Blessed Virgin is well known. It was under her auspices he undertook, in a vessel called by her name, the discovery of a new world. He daily said her office on board ship from a valuable MS. given him by Alexander VI. before his departure and afterwards bequeathed to Genoa, and the Salve Regina was sung every evening by his followers.

Porta Camollia is not remarkable in an architectural point of view, but it has its sacred associations. It was here St. Bernardin of Siena used to come every night, when a boy, to pray before the tutelar Madonna of the gate. His aunt, hearing him speak of going to see the fairest of women, followed him at a distance one night and discovered his secret.

The chapel of the Confraternity of San Bernardin is a museum of art. The walls are covered with fine frescoes of the life of the Virgin by Beccafumi, Sodoma, and Pacchia. One of the most beautiful is Sodoma’s “Assumption,” in which Mary—pulchra ut luna—in a mantle like a violet cloud, is borne up to her native heaven by angels full of grace. The apostles, with thoughtful, devout, but not astonished faces, stand around the tomb, out of which rise two tall lilies amid the white roses. St. Thomas lifts his hands to receive the sacred girdle.

Everywhere about this chapel is

There are more than sixty churches and chapels at Siena, but perhaps not one without some work of art that is noteworthy. Siena was the cradle of art in the thirteenth century, and has its aureola of artists as well as of saints. The school of Florence only dates from the fourteenth century. Guido da Siena, Bonamico, and Diotisalvi were the glorious precursors of Cimabue, and Simone Memmi, a century later, shared with Giotto the friendship and admiration of Petrarch.

The old Sienese artists were profoundly religious. In their statutes of 1355 they say: “We, by the grace of God, make manifest to rude and ignorant men the miraculous events operated by virtue, and in confirmation, of our holy faith.” The efflorescence of the arts is one of the expressions of a profound faith. We have only to visit the galleries of Italy, filled with the sad spoils of numberless churches and convents, to be convinced of this. And there is not a tomb of a saint of the middle ages out of which does not bloom some flower of art, fair as the lilies that spring from the sepulchre of the Virgin. What wreaths of art entwine the tombs of St. Francis, St. Dominic, and St. Antony of Padua!

The collection of paintings at the Academy of Siena is very interesting. Here Beccafumi represents Pg 350 St. Catharine receiving the stigmata. She is in soft, gray robes, with a lovely face, kneeling before a crucifix under an archway, through which you see the landscape. A dead, thorny tree is behind her. By way of contrast to her beauty and grace is the austere St. Jerome, haggard and worn, with his lion, before one of the pillars of the arch. At the other is a Dominican in black and white garments. Above are the Madonna and Child attended by angels. The whole picture is very soft and charming.

Sodoma has also here a St. Catharine with a delicate, thoughtful face, and a crucifix in her pierced hands.

Perhaps the most striking picture in the gallery is Sodoma’s “Christ Bound,” which is wonderful in expression. The face and form are very human and of grand development. From under the crown of thorns flows the long, amber hair. The eyes are sad, inexpressibly sad, and the bleeding form is infinitely pathetic. “It is a thing to stand and weep at,” says Hawthorne.

Sodoma’s “Judith,” in a blue dress and orange mantle, stands beside a leafless tree, holding up the bloody knife with one hand, and the head of Holofernes with the other. She has a gleaming jewel on her forehead, though the old rabbis represent her with a wreath of lilies, believed by the ancients to be a protection against witchcraft and peril.

The university of Siena existed in the thirteenth century. Among its noted members was Cisto da Siena, a Jew, who became a Catholic and a monk, and finally a Calvinist. Condemned to death for his apostasy, he was indebted for his life III. and Cardinal Ghislieri, afterwards Pius V.

M. Taine speaks of the deplorable ignorance of the present Sienese, and says there is no library, not a book, in the place.[109] As he seems, by his journal, to have been there only two days, he probably, like many travellers, noted down his preconceived opinion. The library of Siena, one of the oldest in Italy, has always been famous. It was founded by Niccolo Oliva, an Augustinian friar, and contains fifty thousand volumes—a respectable number for an inland town. About seven hundred belong to the very first age of printing. There are also five thousand manuscripts, among which are a Greek Gospel of the tenth century that came from the imperial chapel at Constantinople, bound in silver, and many other rare MSS. and documents, such as the original will (in Latin) of Boccaccio, and autograph writings of Metastasio, St. Catharine, and St. Bernardin.

Siena has several charitable institutions. The asylum for deaf mutes, founded by Padre Pendola is spacious and agreeable. The great hospital della Scala, opposite the cathedral, founded by Fra Sorore, is one of the most ancient in Italy. It is vast and sunny, with a fine view over the valley around Siena. Its atmosphere is thoroughly religious, with its walls frescoed by the old masters, its numerous altars and religious emblems. St. Catharine used to come here to attend the sick. It is now served by Sisters of Charity.

It is dreadful to say, but the first glimpse we had of the Duomo, with its striped wall of black and white Pg 351 marble, reminded us of good old Sarah Battles—“now with God”—and her cribbage-board, which Charles Lamb tells us was made of the finest Sienese marble, and brought by her uncle from Italy. But on coming nearer to it every trivial thought vanishes before its grandeur and expressive richness of detail. The impression it makes on the mind is so profound, M. Taine says, that “what we feel on entering St. Peter’s at Rome cannot be compared to it.” He calls it “a most admirable Gothic flower, but of a new species that has blossomed in a more propitious clime, the production of minds of greater cultivation and genius, more serene, more beautiful, more religious, and yet healthy; and which is to the cathedrals of France what the poems of Dante and Petrarch are to the chansons of the French trouvères.”

On the pavement before the entrance is represented the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican who went up into the Temple to pray—a lesson to ponder over as we enter the house of prayer. The façade is of marvellous workmanship. Amid angels and prophets and symbolic sculpture, delicate as lace-work, are St. Ansano, St. Catharine, and San Bernardin—the special patrons of Siena. On entering the church you are at first dazzled by its richness. The pavement is unrivalled in the world, with its pictures in niello, by an art now lost, where we find page after page from the Scriptures, some written by the powerful hand of Beccafumi, whose cartoons are to be seen at the Belle Arti; sibyls noble as goddesses; Trismegistus, who received his knowledge from Zoroaster, offering the Pimandra in which is written: “The God who

The frieze around the nave is adorned with the heads of the popes down to Alexander III. Among these, strange to say, was once Pope Joan, such hold had that popular error on the public mind. It was Florimond de Raymond, a counsellor of the parliament of Bordeaux, and a friend of Montaigne and Justus Lipsius, who, in the sixteenth century, protested against such an insult to the Papacy, and by his efforts had it effaced. He wrote to the Sovereign Pontiff himself: “Avenge the injury done to your predecessors. Order this monster to be removed from the place where Satan, the father of lies, has had it set up. Do not suffer an image to remain of that which never existed. If there was no body, let there be no shadow”; and he calls upon the pope to destroy Pg 352 this idol, raised to the disgrace of the church. Besides this, he wrote a book, now rare, completely exploding the fable, showing by incontestable documents there was not the least place for Joan in the succession of popes. This work, together with his appeal, produced such an effect as to procure the removal of her portrait from the cathedral of Siena. The illustrious Cardinal Baronius wrote to him in 1600 that it had just been removed by order of the Grand Duke of Tuscany according to his wishes, and he congratulated him in magnificent terms on such a triumph.

On an altar in the left nave is the crucifix borne by the Sienese at the battle of Monte Aperti, and beneath the arches are still suspended, after so many centuries, the long flag-poles captured from the Florentines Sept. 4, 1260, the most glorious day in the history of Siena.

At the right is the chapel of the Madonna del Voto, built by Alexander VII., a Sienese pope (Fabio Chigi), with its Byzantine-looking Virgin amid paintings, bronzes, mosaics, and precious stones.

The family of Piccolomini is glorified in this church. To it belonged III., also a lover of the arts, and Ascanio Piccolomini, Archbishop of Siena, a friend of Galileo, to whom he gave hospitality when he came forth from what people are pleased to call the dungeons of the Inquisition at Rome—that is, from pleasant apartments in the delightful palace of the Tuscan ambassador on the Trinità de’ Monti, now the French Academy. The Piccolomini chapel has five statues sculptured by Michael Angelo, and the beautiful hall, known as the Library, is world-famous for its frescoes of the life of Pius II. by Pinturicchio.

The whole church is a temple of art, with its sculptured altar, its bronze tabernacle, its rare paintings, its beautiful pillars of differently-colored marbles, and its rich windows of stained glass. Nothing could be more serene and calm than the atmosphere of this glorious church. Amid the sacred silence, the struggling light, with the grandest symbols of religion on every side, you feel lifted for a moment out of your own mean imprisonments into a very heaven of art and piety.

Pg 353

SIR THOMAS MORE.

A HISTORICAL ROMANCE.

FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.

XVI.

Whilst Margaret and Pierre Gilles were thus conversing, above their heads, in a magnificent gallery flashing with gilt, and adorned with portraits of all the archbishops who had occupied this palace, destined for their residence, the court had assembled, and there the jury was called which was to try, or rather to condemn, Sir Thomas More.

At the extremity of this hall, upon an elevated platform all covered with carpet and fringe, were seated the new lord chancellor, Thomas Audley; near him, Sir John Fitz-James, Lord Chief-Justice; and beyond, Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury; the Duke of Norfolk, several lords of the Privy Council, among them the Duke of Suffolk, the Abbot of Westminster, and Cromwell, who on this occasion acted as secretary. To the left of the court, and near the jury, was seated Richard Rich, the creature of Cromwell, and his worthy associate, newly appointed, on account of his efficient services, solicitor-general.

“Sir Thomas Palmer, knight?” said the clerk. “Sir Thomas Peint, knight? George Lowell, esquire? Thomas Burbage, esquire? Geoffrey Chamber, gentleman? Edward Stockmore, gentleman? Joseph Leake, gentleman? William Brown, gentleman? Thomas Bellington, gentleman? John Parnell, gentleman? Richard Bellam, gentleman? George Stokes, gentleman?”

“Sir Thomas More,” said the lord chancellor, in a slow and hard tone, “do you challenge any one of these gentlemen of the jury?”

“No, my lord,” replied Sir Thomas, who was standing up before the court, leaning upon a cane he held in his hand, and which had been of great assistance to him during the long sessions he had already been obliged to endure in that fatiguing and inconvenient position. Meanwhile, he anxiously watched the door through which the accused entered, and was uneasy at not seeing the Bishop of Rochester; for they met only in court, and it was a moment of relief when he beheld his friend near him, although he every day remarked with sadness that Rochester was failing in a lamentable manner.

“The accused challenges none of the members of the jury,” proclaimed the lord chief-justice. He then arose, and began to recite the formula of the oath to be taken by each member of the jury.

“Now, Sir Thomas,” said the chancellor, “I desire to address you yet a last observation, and I wish with all my heart that you may yield to it; because the king, not having forgotten your long services, is deeply grieved at the perilous position in which your obstinacy, too evidently the result of malice, has placed you. He has Pg 354 ordered us to unbend again, and for the last time, so far as to implore you, in his own name and for the love of him, to take the oath of obedience which you owe to the statute of Parliament, and of fidelity to his royal person—an oath he has a right to exact of you according to all laws, divine and human.”

“In fidelity, my lord,” replied Sir Thomas, “in respect, in attachment, I have never been wanting to the king. It has been a long time, a very long time, an entire lifetime, since I took the oath. It cannot be changed; therefore it can never be necessary to have it renewed.”

“You persist, then, in your culpable obstinacy?” said the lord chancellor.

“Nay, my lord, I am not obstinate.”

“Then say, at least,” cried Cranmer, wishing to appear animated by an officious zeal, “what offends you in this oath, what word you would reject—what is the reason, in fine, that prevents you from taking it.”

Sir Thomas raised his head, and paused a moment to consider the court. There was the Abbot of Westminster, who, during the days of his prosperity and favor, had overwhelmed him with visits and surfeited him with flattery; by his side the Duke of Norfolk, who without emotion beheld him to-day near death, and yet he had formerly loved him as a friend in whom he felt honored; Cromwell, whom he had always treated with respect, in spite of the antipathy he felt for him; the Duke of Suffolk, who had solicited him unceasingly, and almost gone down on his knees to him to obtain money from the king or a place for one of his creatures; Sir John Fitz-James, finally, to

“You have heard, prisoner?” said Richard Rich brusquely.

“Pardon me, sir,” answered Sir Thomas gently; “but the lords have already spoken so much about the king’s displeasure that, if I should refuse to take this oath of supremacy, I fear to augment it still more by giving the reasons.”

“Ah! this is too much,” cried all the lords. “You not only refuse to take the oath, but you are not even willing to say why you refuse.”

“I would rather believe,” said Cromwell, “that Sir Thomas has returned to reason, and that he is no longer so sure that the oath may wound his conscience. Sir Thomas, is it not the case that you are now rather in a state of doubt and uncertainty in this regard? You know,” he continued, “that we owe entire obedience to the king; therefore you should take the oath he demands of you, and the scruples you feel would be removed by this imperious necessity.”

“It is true, my lord,” replied Sir Thomas, “that I ought to obey the king in all things as a faithful subject—which I am, and will be until death. But this is a case of conscience, in which I am not bound to obey the prince. Listen to me, my lord of Canterbury,” he said, fixing his eyes upon him with an expression full of benevolence. Pg 355 “I would blame none of those who have taken the oath; but, at the same time, I must say, if your argument was solid, there would be no more cases of doubtful conscience, because it would be sufficient for the king to pronounce yes or no in order to annihilate them all.”

“Truly,” cried the Abbot of Westminster, hurriedly interrupting him, “you are very obstinate in your own opinions; you ought to see that, from whatever point you view this question, you are necessarily mistaken, since you are entirely in opposition to the chief council of the kingdom, and that without doubt it possesses light enough to remove and destroy the scruples of your conscience.”

“My lord,” replied Sir Thomas, “if it is true that I am alone in my opposition to the entire Parliament, I ought certainly to feel alarmed. Nevertheless, in refusing the oath I listen to and follow the voice of the greatest of all counsellors—one to which every man should listen before any other; a monitor which he carries always within his own bosom. Besides, I will add that the opinion of the English Parliament cannot overbalance that of the Council of all Christendom.”

“Then you blame the Parliament, and refuse to adhere to the act of succession it has established?” angrily exclaimed Norfolk, the uncle of Anne Boleyn.

“My lord,” replied Sir Thomas, “your lordship knows that my intention is not, as I have already explained, to find fault either with the act or with the men who have drawn it up, nor to blame the oath nor those who have taken it. As far as I am personally concerned, I cannot take this oath without exposing myself to eternal damnation; and if you doubt that it is my conscience

Norfolk made a gesture of impatience. Then Audley, lord chancellor, turned toward his colleagues. “You see, you hear,” he said, “that Sir Thomas believes that he knows more than all the priests in London—than the Bishop of Rochester himself!” And he dwelt with a slight tone of irony on the last sentence.

“What! the Bishop of Rochester,” cried Sir Thomas.

“Without doubt, the Bishop of Rochester,” repeated Audley. “Mr. Secretary,” he said, turning towards Cromwell and giving him a preconcerted signal, “communicate to the accused a certain fact in which he is interested.”

Cromwell, descending from the platform, approached Sir Thomas and whispered in his ear: “The Bishop of Rochester has consented to swear; they have conducted him to the king, who has forgotten all his past conduct, and intends to load him with new favors.”

“Fisher has sworn!” cried Sir Thomas; and he was struck with consternation.

“Certainly!” said Cromwell, with an ill-disguised expression of irony and satirical joy; “they concealed it from you, that it might not be said you had pinned your opinion to the sleeve of another.”

“Sir,” answered More in a tone of profound sorrow, but with an expression of dignity greater still, “rest perfectly satisfied they will not say that. While bishops are appointed to do good and teach us Pg 356 to do it, it does not follow that, if they fall into error, we should imitate them. I am deeply afflicted by what you tell me, but do not change my opinion for all that. My conscience alone has directed me; now she alone remains with me, but I cannot, neither must I, cease to listen to her. I blame nobody—nobody! O my friend! what anguish has been reserved for me. My God! thou hast permitted it. Rochester has fallen!” said More in a low voice. “Lord, if the cedars break, what, then, will become of the reeds?”

Sir Thomas was unable to comprehend how Fisher could have been induced to yield or become so weak, and he was reduced to a state of mortal affliction.

“What!” said Cromwell, “can you not make up your mind?”

“Nay, sir, nay; I cannot make up my mind to this. There remains nothing more for me to do in this world, and I pray the Lord to remove me from it!”

“The accused refuses everything,” replied Cromwell in a loud voice, as he turned away from him.

“What obstinacy!” exclaimed the lords in one voice. “Sir Thomas, swear!—we conjure you in the name of all you hold most dear.”

“Alas!” said Sir Thomas to himself, “this is why he has not appeared. Alas! each day when I have suffered so much seeing him stand so long by my side, pale with fatigue and weakness, I was nevertheless happy. To-day—can it be? No, he has not been able to endure their tortures longer. God forgive them and save this country! Your pardon, my lords,” he said, remembering that they had addressed him. “What were your words to me?”

“He does not even listen,” they remarked. “We conjure you to

“I cannot,” replied Sir Thomas firmly, “and I positively refuse.”

On hearing him pronounce these words, which left them no alternative, there was a sudden commotion among the lords; they regarded each other with anxiety.

“A man of such merit, of such virtue,” thought Fitz-James, filled with remorse—“what business have I here?”

“Truly, Sir Thomas,” cried Secretary Cromwell, feigning compassion, “I am sorely grieved to hear you speak thus, and I declare here, before all this respectable assembly, that I would like better to lose an only son than to see you refuse the oath in this manner. For very certainly the king will be deeply wounded by it; he will conceive the most violent suspicions, and will not be able to believe that you have had no part in that affair of the Maid of Kent.”

“I am very much moved by your affection,” replied Sir Thomas; “but whatever penalties I may have to undergo, it is impossible for me to redeem them at the price of my soul.”

“You hear him, my lords,” said the chancellor, looking at his colleagues. “Sir Thomas, deaf to all our prayers, forgetting the favors with which the king has overwhelmed him for twenty years, tramples under foot the authority of Parliament, the laws of the kingdom, and persists traitorously, maliciously, and in your presence, in refusing to take an oath which every subject of this kingdom cannot and ought not to refuse. Consequently, I order the act of accusation to be read to the court, after which it will render judgment and pronounce its sentence.”

Pg 357 The clerk then began reading, in a nasal voice and monotonous tone, an accusation so long, the grievances of which were so multiplied, divided, extended, and diluted by a crowd of words and phrases, inductions, prejudices, and all kinds of suspicions, that it would require too much time to report them; but it was easy to see that it had been fabricated in bad faith and with the absence of all reasonable proofs.

This reading continued for two hours, and, when it was finished, the lord chancellor began: “What have you to reply to all this?” said Audley. “You see, Sir Thomas, and you should acknowledge, that you have gravely offended his majesty; nevertheless, the king is so merciful, and is so much attached to you, that he would pardon your obstinacy, if you changed your opinion, and we would be sure of obtaining your pardon, and even the return of his favor.”

He looked at Sir Thomas to see if he was relenting; for, except Cromwell, who desired More’s death, all the others, while too ambitious, too base, or too cowardly to dare sustain him, would have preferred seeing him yield to their entreaties.

“It would rejoice us greatly!” said Sir John Fitz-James.

“Most surely,” cried the Duke of Norfolk.

“Ay, verily,” slowly repeated Cromwell.

“He will listen to nothing!” said the Abbot of Westminster.

“Noble lords, I am under infinite obligations to your lordships for the lively interest you have manifested in my case; but, by the help of God, I wish to continue to live and die in his grace. As to the accusation I have just heard, it is so long, the hatred which has dictated

“He should be permitted to sit down,” said Sir John Fitz-James in a low voice, the tears gathering in his eyes.

“Nobody objects,” said the Duke of Norfolk. “I demand it, on the contrary,” he added, elevating his voice.

“This will never end, then,” murmured Cromwell.

“Let a chair be brought to the accused,” said Audley, who dared not resist the Duke of Norfolk.

Sir Thomas seated himself for a moment, because he was able to stand no longer; then, summoning all his strength, he again arose to his feet, and spoke: “My accusation can be reduced, it seems to me, to four principal heads, and I will try and take them in order. The first crime with which I am accused is of being in my heart an opponent of the king’s second marriage. I confess that I have said to his majesty what my conscience dictated, and in that I can see no treason. But, on the contrary, if, being required by my prince to give him my opinion on a matter of such great importance, and which so deeply concerns the peace of the kingdom, I had basely flattered him, then indeed I should have been a treacherous and perfidious subject to God and to the king. I have not, then, offended, nor wished to offend, my king in replying, with the integrity of my heart, to the question he has asked me; moreover, admitting that I have been at fault in this, I have been punished for it already by the afflictions I have endured, the loss of my office, and the imprisonment I have undergone. The second charge brought against me, and the Pg 358 most explicit, is of having violated the act of the last Parliament, in this: that being a prisoner and examined by the council, I have not been willing, through a spirit of malice, of perfidy, of treachery, and obstinacy, to say whether or not the king was supreme head of the church, and that I have not been willing to confess whether that act was just or unjust, for the reason which I gave—that, having no other rank in the church than that of a simple layman, I had no authority to decide those things. Now, I will avow to your lordships that this was my reply: ‘I had neither done nor said anything which could be alleged and produced against me on the subject of this statute’; and I added that I no longer desired to occupy myself with anything here below, in order to be entirely absorbed in meditating on the Passion of my Saviour Jesus Christ in this miserable world, where I have such a short time to remain; that I wished ill to no one—on the contrary, every kind of prosperity; and also, if that was not sufficient to preserve my life, I did not desire to live; I had violated no law, and that I was not willing to surrender myself as guilty of any crime of high treason—for there are no laws in the world by which a man can be punished for his silence; they can do no more than punish him for his words and actions, and it is God alone who judges the heart.”

As Sir Thomas said these words, the advocate-general, Christopher Hales, suddenly interrupted him: “You say you have not uttered a word nor committed an act against this law; but you admit that you have kept silence, which is a conclusive sign of the malice of your heart, no good subject being able to refuse without crime to reply to

“My silence,” replied More, “is not a sign of the malice of my heart, since I have answered the king when he has consulted me on divers occasions; and I do not believe a man can be convicted of having attacked a law by keeping silence, since this maxim, ‘Qui tacet consentire videtur,’ is adopted and recognized as true by all the most learned and enlightened men of the law. With regard to what you say about a good subject having no right to refuse a direct reply to this question, I believe, on the contrary, that such is his duty, unless, indeed, he wish to be a bad Christian. Now, it is better to obey God than man, and it is better not to offend one’s conscience than everything else in the world, above all when this conscience cannot be the occasion of revolt against, or injury to, the king and the country. I protest to you, on this subject I have not revealed my opinion to any man living.”

“You know very well, on the contrary,” said the Duke of Norfolk sharply, “that your example will be followed, and a great many will refuse the oath on seeing you reject it.”

“Pardon me, my lord,” replied Sir Thomas; “but I have the right to think thus, since a moment ago my lord the chancellor reproached me with being the only one of my opinion in the kingdom. I can say, then, that my silence is neither injurious to the prince nor dangerous to the state.”

“How can you assert,” cried Christopher Hales, “that your refusal will not be the cause of any sedition or of any injury toward the king? Do you not know, then, that all his enemies have their eyes fixed on you, in order to confirm Pg 359 themselves by your audacity, and take advantage of the malice of which you have given proof? What, then, would you call an injury, if not a refusal thus contemptuous and unlawful with respect to the submission you owe to the will of your king, the living image of God upon earth?”

“The king has no enemies, sir,” replied Sir Thomas; “he has only some faithful subjects who wish to sigh in silence over the perfidious counsel which has been given him. I will dare almost to say,” he cried, laying his hand on his breast, “some tender and respectful friends, who would have given all for his glory, sacrificed all for his salvation, but who, for that same cause, cannot approve the error into which he has been made to fall.”

“Alas! he is lost,” thought Sir John; and he turned away his head.

“Well,” said Cromwell to himself, “the case becomes clear; they cannot draw back.”

While a low murmur of surprise and admiration arose among the jury, their foreman leaned toward Mr. Rich, and whispered to him excitedly.

“Truly! It is so, sir!” said the latter, looking fixedly at him. “It seems to me, Sir Thomas Palmer, that your remarks have much weight. Have you been called here to interpret the wishes of the king, or have you, by chance, a mind to make a short sojourn in the Tower or some part of its environs?” And he made his fingers crack. “With your short-sighted justice,” he replied, “do you believe that there are not some great reasons, which they do not wish you to know, which have led Sir Thomas to the bar of this tribunal? And if I should say to you—” He paused.

“It cannot be possible!” said Palmer, awaiting each word of Rich, which seemed to fall drop by drop from his lips. “What! like the other?”

“Exactly, precisely like the other! Wonderful!” said Rich to himself. “They themselves furnish me with the words, the fools! I hope, indeed, that I may be exalted a grade from this; for this herd of jurors make me sweat blood and water. They called them so well chosen! So it appears; one goes to the right, the other to the left, a third to the middle. To the death—that is too hard; no, confiscation, or rather imprisonment. They wish to enter into the spirit of the law, as if they regarded the law! Condemn him, sirs—that is all they ask of you—and then go to your beds! Every one to his trade; theirs is not to inquire what we do, but what we wish them to do!” And Rich, much excited, shaking his great sleeves, leaned forward in order to listen.

“I come, then, to the third article of my accusation,” said Sir Thomas, “by which I am accused of malicious attempts, efforts, and perfidious practices against the statute, because, since being confined in the Tower, I have sent several packages of letters to Bishop Fisher, and in those letters I have exhorted him to violate this same law, and encouraged him in the resistance he has made to it. I have already demanded that those letters should be instantly produced and Pg 360 read to the court; they could thus have acquitted me or convicted me of falsehood. But as you say the bishop has burned them, I am only able to prove what I advance here by my own words; therefore I will state what they contained. The greater portion of those letters related to my private affairs, especially to our old friendship; in one of them alone I responded to the demand he had made to know how I would reply in my interrogatory upon the oath of supremacy, and I wrote to him thus: that I had examined this question in conscience, and he must be content with knowing that it was decided in my mind. God is my witness, as I hope to save my soul, that I have made no other reply, and I cannot presume that this could be considered an attack upon the laws.”

“Oh! no, by no means,” said several of the jurors. “Nevertheless, it would be necessary to see these documents.”

“That is the custom,” said a voice loudly enough.

“The jury examines the documents,” said another; “that is always done.”

“My lord judge! my lord advocate! it is necessary, it is customary—indispensable—”

Audley looked angrily at Rich. “Gentlemen, the jurors are perfectly right,” he cried in a shrill voice; “but these letters have been destroyed. They will proceed to examine other documents; then the witnesses of these facts will be heard.”

“Silence! silence!” cried the court usher.

“Gentlemen, do not interrupt the court,” said Cromwell gravely; “we should listen religiously to the least word of the prisoner’s defence.”

Fatigued and weary, More kept silence; he was thinking, moreover, of his letters to the Bishop of Rochester. “If I had spoken more strongly to my friend,” he sorrowfully reflected, “perhaps he would not have succumbed. My God and my only Saviour! behold the afflictions that overwhelm my soul; for I fear I have only listened to the cowardly prudence of the children of men. And yet what could I do?”

More reproached himself with not having done enough, with having been mistaken. He groaned in spirit and humbled himself to the dust before God; whereas this tribunal by which he was being judged, in the face of which he found himself placed, before which he was traduced, was composed of men whom avarice, fear, and ambition caused to walk rapidly and firmly, without remorse and without shame, in the road, strewn with thorns, of vice, falsehood, and slavery.

“Speak on,” said Cromwell, provoked by his silence; “they will not dare to interrupt you again.”

Sir Thomas raised his eyes to his face, and regarded him fixedly. So much suffering, so many conflicting emotions, were weighing on his mind, that he no longer knew how to resume his discoveries or where he had left the thread of his ideas.

“You had replied to the third article,” said Cromwell, promptly assisting him, for fear of giving the assembly time for reflection. “Now, what else have you to say, and what have you to oppose to the testimony of Master Rich, who has heard you say in the Tower that Pg 361 the statute was a two-edged sword which killed necessarily either the soul or the body?”

“What I have to reply to that,” said Sir Thomas, “is that Master Rich called on me continually while they were removing the books I had in my prison. Fatigued by his importunate demands, I replied to him conditionally (which makes the case very different) that, if it was true, it was equally dangerous to avow or disavow this act; and that if it was similar to a two-edged sword, it was very hard to make it fall on me, who had never contradicted the statute either by my words or my actions. As to their accusing me of having drawn the Bishop of Rochester into my conspiracy, and induced him to make a reply similar to my own—alas! no, I have not done so. I have nothing more to add.” And he took his seat without a word more.

“You have nothing more to say?” repeated the chancellor.

“No, my lord.”

“That is well,” said Audley.

“He is here no longer,” said More; and he looked around him. “Where have they dragged him? To the king, perhaps. We should have received our sentence together. O Fisher! O my friend! No, it cannot be,” said More; “they are surely deceiving me! Does not falsehood flow naturally from their lips? Oh! how I would joy to see him, for one moment only. However, if he has not taken the oath, he will be here.” And he sank again into his silent sadness.

“We will proceed to examine the witnesses,” said the chancellor.

Master Rich, relieving himself immediately of his great robe, slowly descended from the platform and the chair from which he had surveyed

He raised his hand and took the oath without hesitation. He then related how, having entered the prison cell of Thomas More with Palmer and Sir Richard Southwell, he had heard Sir Thomas express himself strongly against the statute and declare that no Parliament in the world would be able to submit to the question of the supremacy.

“You hear, Sir Thomas!” cried all the lords. “There is nothing to reply to this.”

Sir Thomas arose immediately, and an expression of deep emotion showed itself on his weary features. “My lords,” he replied, “if I was a man who had no regard for my oath, I would not be here before you as a criminal. And you, Master Rich,” he continued, turning toward him, “if what you have declared be true, and the oath you have taken be not perjury, then may I never look upon the face of God!—and this I would not assert for all the world contains, if what you have testified was the truth. Listen to me, my lords; judge between us, and learn what I have said to Master Rich. When he came to carry away my books from the dreary prison where I was confined, he approached me, took my hands, overwhelmed me with compliments, and, protesting to me that he had no commission touching the supremacy, during the course of a long conversation he recalled all the circumstances of our childhood, and proposed to me this question: ‘If Parliament recognized me as king, would you recognize me? and would it be treason not to do it?’ I answered that I would recognize him, but it was a casus levis. And in my turn I said to him: ‘If an act of Parliament should Pg 362 declare that God is not God, do you think it would be treason not to submit to that act?’

“Then Master Rich said that this question was too remote, and they could not discuss it. Whereupon he left me, and went away with those whom he had brought with him.

“In good faith, Master Rich,” pursued Sir Thomas, “I am more concerned on account of your perjury than because of the danger into which you have so heartlessly thrown me, and I must tell you that neither I nor any one else has ever regarded you as a man to whom they could confide a thing of so much importance as this. You know that I am acquainted with your life and conversation from your youth up to the present time. We were of the same parish; and you know right well, although I am very sorry to say and speak of it, that you always bore the reputation of having a very flippant and very lying tongue, that you were a great gambler, and you had not a good name in your parish and in the Temple, where you have been reared.

“Your lordships,” continued Sir Thomas, “can you believe that, in an affair of so great moment, I would have had so little discretion as to confide in Master Rich, entertaining the opinion I do of his want of truth and honesty; that I would have disclosed to him the secret of my conscience touching the supremacy of the king—a subject upon which I have been so strongly pressed, and which I have always refused to reveal to any of his grave and noble counsellors, who, your lordships know well, have been so often sent to the Tower to interrogate me? I submit it to your judgment, my lords: does this appear to you credible or possible?

Pg 363 The tribunal looked at him. This earnest and truthful attack on the reputation of Master Rich was hard to weaken, although the latter, after having resumed his seat, had already cried out sneeringly three or four times: “Palmer and Southwell will testify if I have told the truth, yes or no.”

“Yes or no,” repeated Cromwell to himself—“the world is summed up in those two words; only it is necessary to manage them well. Go, clerk,” he said, “call Master Southwell.”

And the clamorous voice of the clerk resounded through the vast enclosure where he kept the witnesses.

“Master Palmer! Master Richard Palmer!” he repeated; and Master Palmer presented himself.

“You swear,” said Audley to the witness, “that the testimony you are about to render before this court, and before the jury interposed between your sovereign lord the king and the prisoner here present at the bar, will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God!”

As the chancellor said these words, they brought the book of the Holy Evangelists, and opened it, in order that Palmer might lay his hand on it to swear.

“But, my lord,” said Palmer, anxiously looking around him, “I know nothing, nothing at all, about what you are going to ask me.”

“Well, you need only tell what you know,” said Audley brusquely.

“Very well, then,” said Palmer in a low voice; and laying his hand on the book, he was sworn in the usual manner.

“What did you hear while removing the books belonging to Sir Thomas?”

“Nothing, my lord. I threw the

“That is not possible!” said Audley. “The chamber is very small; you would have been very near Sir Thomas and Master Rich, who were conversing together, and you must have heard their conversation.”

“I have heard that Sir Thomas stooped down to pick up a book I let fall from my hands, and that it seemed to give him pain when they took his books away from him; so that when I saw the dismal little cell, the pallet they had given him for a bed, the broken earthen pitcher which was in one corner, with an old candle standing in the neck of a bottle, and that they had forbidden him for the future to light that candle—for fear, they said, that he might set fire to the prison—the tears came into my eyes, and I felt my heart ache with sorrow as I thought I had seen him lord chancellor such a little while ago. That is all, my lord.”

“But,” said Cromwell, provoked by this recital, “Sir Thomas spoke; you have declared that already.”

“Oh! he spoke, without doubt. I do not deny that he could speak; certainly he spoke. For instance, when he saw the sack of books carried away he said: ‘Now that the tools are removed, there is nothing more to do but close the shop.’ But we saw, in spite of this pleasantry, that it distressed him very much,” added Palmer after a moment’s silence.

“How prolix is this witness!” said the Abbot of Westminster in a contemptuous tone.

“Come, that’s enough,” said Cromwell. “You know nothing more?”

“No, my lord, nothing more—nothing Pg 364 at all.” And he hastened to withdraw.