Part 11 — CHAPTER XVII. (continued 2)

On the romantic shores of the beautiful Lake of Killarney stands the venerable ruins of Muckross Abbey. No vestige of its former grandeur remains; “its antic pillars massy proof” are all ground into dust, and a magnificent yew-tree that has grown in the very centre of the wreck spreads its mighty, sombre branches like a funereal pall over the fallen temple. And in the lake on the “holy island” of Innisfallen, on a gentle verdant slope, surrounded by thick groves, are still to be seen the few crumbling stones that mark where stood the abbey once so renowned throughout Christendom for its learning and piety.

But it would be a vain task to attempt to enumerate all the beautiful

“Her temples grew as grows the grass”—

and popular tradition tells us that numbers have been hidden from mortal eye, ever since the pious monks who prayed within them were barbarously driven forth or slain.

Mingled among the mossy marbles of fallen altars; among the mouldering stones and the rusted iron of crumbled cloisters; beneath the “churchyard’s bowers”; by the bleak hillsides; on the margins of the sunlit lakes, or under the shadow of the mysterious Round Towers, lie, almost countless, the defaced, mutilated emblems of Ireland’s heart-deep faith—broken crosses—innumerable broken crosses—eloquent of the piety of those by-gone days, eloquent of the ruthlessness of the devastator. They are found scattered over the whole island, and are as various in their styles as in the perfection of their workmanship—some, differing in nothing from the pillar-stones of the pagans, save that they are rudely sculptured with a cross, to mark the graves of the early Irish saints—others have the upper part of the shaft hewn into the form of a circle, from which the arms and the top extend. Crosses, highly sculptured, appear to date from the ninth and twelfth centuries. In these the circle, instead of being simply cut into the face of the stone, is represented by a ring, binding, as it were, the shaft, arms, and upper portion of the cross together. There are scores of these beautiful remains in Ireland, but the finest, perhaps, are those at Monasterboice, near Drogheda; they are so singularly symmetrical and artistic as to have excited the enthusiasm of every learned archæologist who has seen them.

There were originally three crosses at Monasterboice; two still exist, well preserved; the third was broken, tradition says, by Cromwell. The larger of the two nearly perfect crosses measures twenty-seven feet in height, and is composed of three stones. The shaft, at its junction with the base, is two feet in breadth and one foot three inches in thickness. It is divided upon the western side by fillets into seven compartments, each of which contains two or more boldly-cut figures, now much worn by the rain and wind of nine centuries. The sides of the cross are ornamented with figures and scroll-work alternately.

“The smaller cross, fifteen feet high, is exquisitely beautiful,” says Mr. Wakeman, in the Archæologia Hibernica, “and has suffered little from the effects of time. It stands almost as perfect as when first erected nine hundred years ago. The figures retain almost all their original sharpness and beauty of execution. Within the circular head of the cross, on its eastern face, our Saviour is represented sitting in judgment. A choir of angels occupy the arm to the right of the figure. Several hold musical instruments, among which is seen the ancient small and triangular Irish harp. The space to the left of our Saviour is crowded with figures, several of which are in an attitude of despair; an armed fiend is driving them from before the throne. The compartment immediately beneath bears a figure weighing in a pair of huge scales a smaller figure, the balance seeming to preponderate in his favor. One who appears to have

We can imagine how, when this masterpiece was pronounced finished by the gifted artist, the chiefs and abbots, the bards and warriors, the monks and priests, and may be many a rival sculptor, crowded around it, full of wonder and admiration for what they must have considered a truly glorious, nay, unequalled work. And Muiredach most certainly was not refused the boon he craved.

We have mentioned pillar-stones, and though they do not belong to the Christian vestiges of the Island of Saints, still they are so mingled with the holier relics that they cannot be passed over in silence. Obscure, mysterious in their origin, many hypotheses have been formed respecting them by the learned, and they have been supposed by turns to be landmarks, idols, or monumental stones. Some of the Irish pillar-stones are inscribed with the Ogham character, a kind of writing believed to have been in use in Ireland before the introduction of Christianity. Stones very similar, but perforated, are also found in Ireland, in Scotland, and even, it is said, in India. What may have been their origin is completely unknown.

The most remarkable of the pillar-stones is found at the celebrated hill of Tara, in the county of Meath. Dr. Petrie thinks that this monument is the famous Lia Fail, or Stone of Destiny, upon which, for many ages, the kings of Ireland were crowned, and which is generally supposed to have been removed from Ireland to Scotland for the coronation of Fergus Mac Eark, an Irish prince—a prophecy having declared that in whatever country this stone was preserved, a king of the Scotic (ancient Irish) race should reign. The learned Doctor refers to some MSS., not earlier certainly than the tenth century, in which the stone is mentioned as still existing at Tara. “If this authority may be relied on,” says Mr. Wakeman, “the stone carried away from Scotland by Edward the First, and now preserved in Westminster Abbey, under the coronation chair, has long attracted a degree of celebrity to which it was not entitled, while the veritable Lia Fail, the stone which, according to the early bardic accounts, roared beneath the ancient Irish monarchs at their inauguration, remained forgotten and diregarded among the green raths of deserted Tara.” Deserted Tara! thirteen centuries have passed away since the kings and chiefs of Ireland were wont to assemble in the royal city—

These raths or duns, which are found in every part of Ireland, often consist of only a circular intrenchment, but most frequently form a steep mound, flat at the top and strongly intrenched. The works usually enclosed a piece of ground upon which, it is presumed, the houses of lesser importance stood, the mound being occupied by the dwelling of the chief. The circular enclosures generally contain excavations of a beehive form, lined with uncemented stones, and connected by passages sufficiently large to admit a man. These chambers or artificial caverns are supposed to have been store-houses for food and treasure, and places of refuge for the women and children in time of war.

In the centre of the principal mound of Tara, the Forradh, now stands the Lia Fail—the great pillar-stone—the stone of destiny—moved from its primitive site to its present in order to mark the grave—“the croppies’ grave,” it is called—of some men killed in an encounter with British troops during the rising in 1798.

By the side of the hoary ruins of the earlier monastic houses is almost invariably seen one of those singular and, for many centuries, mysterious edifices, the Round Towers. The question of the origin and uses of these remarkable vestiges long occupied the attention of antiquaries. They were supposed to have been built by the Danes, or to have a Phœnician or Indo-Scythic origin, and to have contained the sacred fire from whence all the fires in the kingdom were annually rekindled. There were almost as many theories concerning them as there were towers, and each succeeding theory appeared to involve the subject in deeper mystery than ever—a mystery that was proverbial until dispelled for ever by the learned Dr. Petrie. This gentleman has decided that the towers are of Christian and of ecclesiastical origin, and were erected at various periods between the fifth and thirteenth centuries—that they were designed to answer, at least, a twofold use, namely, to serve as belfries, and as keeps, or places of strength, in which the sacred utensils, books, relics, and other valuables were deposited, and into which the ecclesiastics to whom they belonged could retire for security in cases of sudden attack; and that they were probably also used, when occasion required, as beacons and watch-towers. These conclusions were arrived at after a long and patient investigation of the architectural peculiarities of the Round Towers, and also of the religious structures generally found in connection with them, and the vexed question is at rest.

The sites of a hundred and eighteen of these buildings have been discovered, the greater number in ruins; indeed, of some only the foundations remain; others are almost perfect in external shape. They vary from eighty to a hundred and ten feet in height, tapering gradually to the summit, and terminated by a high conical stone roof. The Tower of Clondalkin, near Dublin, is nearly perfect; but perhaps the most noble example is found at Monasterboice, where it combines, with the magnificent crosses we have described, and the ivy-grown ruined churches, to

Frightful as were the devastations of the Danes in Ireland—the unhappy land bore the brunt of their fury—and frequent as was the pillage of religious property, there have been found many beautiful relics of sacred objects belonging to the sacked and ravaged abbeys and churches. In newly-ploughed lands, in the beds of rivers, in the heaps of crumbled stones around the ruins, in the bogs have been discovered, among many other interesting evidences of early Irish civilization, pastoral crooks and crosiers, chalices of stone and of silver, and ancient quadrangular bells of bronze and of iron. These last appear to have been in use in Ireland as early as the time of St. Patrick. Some of them, we are told by Cambrensis, were so highly reverenced that both clergy and laity were more afraid of swearing falsely by them than by the Gospels—“because of some hidden and miraculous power with which they were gifted, and by the vengeance of the saint to whom they were particularly pleasing, their despisers and transgressors were severely punished.”

The crooks and crosiers are in general of exquisite workmanship, exhibiting a profusion of ornament of extreme beauty. Among these relics has been found one which affords the most striking evidence of the proficiency that Irish artificers had arrived at in many of the arts previous to the arrival of the English. It is known as the Cross of Cong, and was made at Roscommon, by native Irishmen, about the year 1123, in the reign of Turlogh O’Connor, father of Roderich, the last king of Ireland. The form is most elegant, and it is completely covered with minute and elaborate ornaments, a portion worked in pure gold. The ornaments are, for the most part, tracery and grotesque animals fancifully combined, and similar in character to the decorations found upon crosses of stone of the same period. In the centre, at the intersection, is set a large crystal, through which is visible a piece of the true cross, as inscriptions in Irish and Latin distinctly record.

The copies of the Gospels and of the sacred writings which had been used by the saints of Erin were often preserved by their successors enclosed in cases of yew, or some wood equally durable. Some of these deeply-interesting evidences of Irish piety and learning have come down to us, and are to be seen in the collection of the Royal Irish Accademy at Dublin. One of them, the Caah, is a box about nine inches long and eight broad, formed of brass plates riveted together, and ornamented with gems and chasings of gold and silver. It contains a rude wooden box enclosing a copy of the ancient Vulgate translation of the Psalms in Latin, written on vellum, and, it is believed, by the hand of Saint Columbkille, “the Apostle of the Picts.” It seems to have been handed down in the O’Donnell family, to which the great saint belonged.

Another most interesting relic, also in the collection of the Academy, is the Domnach Airgid, which contains, beyond a doubt, a considerable portion of the copy of the holy Gospels used by Saint Patrick, and presented to him by Saint Macarthen. This MS. has three covers; the first and most ancient, of yew; the second, of copper plated with silver; and the third, of silver plated with gold.

Beautiful—sadly, solemnly beautiful—are the remains of Ireland’s ancient

O lovely, unhappy isle! “thou chief of reliquaries,” though thy shamrock be watered with tears, still thou hast the better part!

Will “the bound and suffering victim” ever again breathe freely?—will religious freedom and political freedom ever again stand hand in hand on the dewy turf of Erin?—will the Lia Fail ever again roar beneath the seat of an independent Irish ruler?—these are questions which Time alone can answer. But whatever fate may be reserved for long-tried Ireland in the future, however disconsolate her present, every Irishman’s heart should glow with pride and love when he remembers the glory of her early days—glory such as no other country ever possessed—glory of which no centuries of relentless tyranny can deprive her—the glory of having been, when all was dark around, the home of learning and the fatherland of saints!

THE LEGENDS OF OISIN, BARD OF ERIN,

BY AUBREY DE VERE.

II.

THE DEATH OF OSCAR.[80]

THE PLACE VENDOME AND LA ROQUETTE.

THE BEGINNING AND THE END OF THE COMMUNE.

FROM LE CORRESPONDANT.

Concluded.

The time passed in this anteroom was not lost. We became acquainted and we encouraged one another. In the school of misfortune, people learn to be communicative, and to overlook differences of age and social rank. Those who did not anticipate any imminent danger were undeceived. We will add, to show how profoundly

At last the door of the anteroom opened, and a citoyen with red pantaloons, a red girdle, and red cravat called over the prisoners. It was Citoyen François, the Director of La Roquette. Those familiar with the history of Paris know that, at the end of the Empire, the post of the sapeurs-pompiers of La Villette was taken by assault by a handful of demagogues, who killed several sapeurs-pompiers. The leaders of the insurrection were no other than General Eudes, a member of the Commune, and Citizen François, the warden of La Roquette. The citizen-director of Mazas had still greater claims on the confidence of the Commune. It will be seen that the hostages were well guarded.

La Grande-Roquette, so called to distinguish it from La Petite-Roquette, which is opposite, and where young prisoners are confined, is the prison of those condemned to death and to the travaux forcés. It is divided into two distinct parts: the eastern and western buildings. Separated by a spacious interior court, they are united on the street by a third building, in the lower part of which is the jailer’s office; and, on the opposite side, by a sufficiently large chapel, which was, of course, closed and stript of all the exterior emblems they could destroy.

Some of us were confined in the first story of the western building where the hostages were who came the night before. The second and third stories were occupied by those sentenced by the court of assize of the Seine.

The remainder, and I was of the number, were sent to the third story of the eastern building. The first story was occupied by about forty Parisian guardsmen, prisoners of the Commune; the second story by a somewhat larger number of sergents de ville, who were found at Montmartre in the affair of the eighteenth of March. In consequence of the defection of a part of the line, they fell into the power of the insurgents. There were also on the same story a dozen artillerymen, likewise prisoners. The third story, where I was conducted with seven ecclesiastics and three laymen, was already occupied by a hundred soldiers, some of whom, on their way through Paris at the time of the proclamation of the Commune, refused to serve it, and others had been taken prisoners in the engagements between the insurgents and the regular army. The following night, three vicars from Belleville and St. Ambroise were imprisoned with us.

The cells of La Roquette are extremely plain. They are about one mètre and a few centimètres wide and two and a half metrès long. No chair, no table: the only article of furniture is an iron bedstead. Neatness is the least thing to be remarked concerning them. It was very evident that several generations of criminals had occupied them without rendering them any more agreeable. This was not all. The first night I found myself among two kinds of insects whose names are unmentionable. aux prises with these nocturnal enemies, I had at least the consolation of lighting my taper, of complaining the next day to the hostess, and of changing my room or the inn. But at La Roquette none of these things was possible. Having no chair to sit on, I remained seated on my bed.

I must, however, mention one advantage at La Roquette of which we were deprived at Mazas: the cellular discipline was not as rigorous. The prisoners could at certain moments of the day see each other in the court, or in the passage of the story they occupied. Each window lights two cells separated by a strong partition, but between the partition and the grating of the window, common to both cells, is a space through which the occupants can talk, and even pass a book. I could thus exchange some pious thoughts and fortifying resolutions with my neighbor, the Abbé Amodru. During the day we spoke of God, of death, eternity, of the assistance we could render our companions: during the night, we regarded with horror the lugubrious fires that seemed to be devouring the whole city.

The very night of our arrival, a battery of seven large marine pieces set up at Père-la-Chaise began to discharge shells and petroleum-bombs on different parts of Paris. As it was only a few mètres from our prison, it shook our cells and stunned us with the frightful detonation, and the whir of the projectiles passing above our heads. This battery did not cease its incendiary work till the following Saturday, the twenty-seventh of May, at half-past three, the moment when the regular army gained possession of the cemetery. Some days before my arrest, Citizen Delescluze declared in a proclamation, little noticed, that the miserable advocates of the government of the fourth of September, ready in words to defend us against the Prussians behind the forts, ramparts, and barricades, had given everything up to them; but the Communists would show themselves faithful to their plan of defence against the royalists—“after the ramparts, the barricades; after the barricades, the houses; after the houses, fire and the mine.” This great criminal should have kept his word.

We were permitted on Wednesday morning to hold communication with one another. But the director gave the strictest orders that there should be none whatever between us and the soldiers. When the soldiers were not in one of the courts of the prison, we were shut up in our cells.

I observed M. l’Abbé Beyle, one of Mgr. Darboy’s vicar-generals, in one of the windows of the first story of the western building. He immediately recognized me, and informed me by some intelligible signs that the hostages would have recreation together in one of the courts, and that M. Deguerry would be very glad to see me and obtain news of the parish of the Madeleine.

At noon the wardens ordered us to descend. I was affected at the thought that I was about to see our archbishop and vicar-generals, my curé, and some of my friends belonging to the clergy and religious orders of Paris. I stationed myself before the door through which they would come out of the western building. The archbishop was the first to appear. He was hardly recognizable, such frightful ravages had privations and sufferings wrought on his frail and delicate constitution. He was immediately surrounded by the priests of the eastern building. The laymen were not

With the exception of a quarter of an hour I passed with Mgr. Surat, Père Olivaint, M. Bayle, M. Petit, the chief secretary of the archbishop, M. Moléon, the curé of St. Séverin, and some other confrères, I passed the whole time of recreation with M. Deguerry. He was desirous of news concerning his clergy and parish. The closing of the Madeleine greatly distressed him, but, when he heard that nothing had been injured or desecrated, he resumed his serenity. He said little of the humiliating treatment of Raoul Rigault, and the ennui and sufferings of his long imprisonment in the cells of Mazas. So far from retaining any bitterness in his heart, he wished “to consecrate the few years he still had to live in doing as much good as possible to those who had been persecuting the clergy and injuring the cause of religion; in adapting the charities and the ministry of the times to the exceptional wants of Paris; and in showing that by abandoning Jesus Christ and his holy teachings, peoples, as well as individuals, only meet with deceptive illusions and material and moral ruin.”

We quote these words to show that M. Deguerry had no grave fears respecting his situation. The archbishop and he both knew that the death of the hostages had been discussed by the Commune, but they were convinced that these threats would never be executed. What reasons had they for such an assurance? Had they received an absolute promise? Were they ignorant of the revolutionary orgies of Paris, and the brutal hatred of its tyrants? Did they think, having nothing to reproach themselves for, that no one could conceive the idea of putting them to death? I was vainly endeavoring to find an explanation of this assurance when Mgr. Darboy joined us.

If his health was affected and his body enfeebled, his mind was undoubtedly clear and sagacious. He not only took broad and correct views of the events and men of the times, but he displayed an acuteness almost caustic. The consciousness of his ecclesiastical dignity and his intellectual strength suggested to him many observations, full of animation and reality, respecting the incredible humiliations that he had received from Raoul Rigault and other heroes of the club, or estaminet, who thought they were aggrandizing themselves and acquiring claims on the admiration of posterity by their absurdity and impertinence. He bitterly deplored the weakening of the public sense of respect for authority, and thought, without a reformation in this respect, Paris and the whole of France would never recover from their misfortunes. To support these observations, Mgr. Darboy recalled the conclusion of one of his last pastoral letters, in which he predicted that, if society, persisted in disregarding the precepts of the Gospel and

I, in my turn, recalled to his recollection that a democratic journal had not hesitated to condemn this language as bearing the impress of exaggeration, so desirous was it that Paris should be divested of all religious belief or practice. He remembered the article spoken of, and seemed pleased to hear it quoted.

The archbishop knew I had only been arrested the week before, and was aware that, in consequence of my former functions, I had frequent intercourse with the political world. After questioning me respecting the religious condition of Paris and the parish affairs, and inquiring about Mgr. Buquet, who, notwithstanding his great age and notoriety, had bravely remained at Paris, rendering quite providential service in the diocesan administration, of which he was the only member free after the arrest and incarceration of M. Jourdain at the Conciergerie, and M. Icard at the Prison de la Santé, Mgr. Darboy added, in a tone that excluded all personal preoccupation:

“What is thought of the situation and fate of the hostages in the political world of Paris?”

“Thanks to the confidence inspired by the Commune, honest men, monseigneur, are daily taking flight. When the committee of public safety came to prove my mistake in not following in their traces, I only knew four persons in Paris with whom I could converse, and that rarely, on the events of the day:—M. L——, the chief secretary of the Crédit Foncier; M. G——, a former deputy from Seine-et-Marne; the Count de L——, an old officer; and M. G——, the president of the Conseil de Fabrique, at St. Eustache, imprisoned for a short time, though eighty-four years old, because a supply of bread and meat was found at his house which he had the boldness to distribute to the poor of the Quartier des Halles. If, therefore, you wish to know the impressions of the political and diplomatic world now at Paris, you will be nearly reduced to mine, and it is a question if my modest régal could tempt monseigneur’s appetite.”

“I perceive,” said Mgr. Darboy, smiling, “that the Commune has not had any time to depress your spirits. I am waiting for an answer to my question.”

“All persons of honesty and intelligence condemn your arrest, monseigneur, and that of the other hostages. Only the Prussians and the Commune are capable of reviving this barbarous custom. I have been assured that the representatives of several foreign powers have taken steps to free you from danger, and doubtless the government at Versailles, in the impossibility of directly intervening, will consider it a duty to encourage these efforts.”

“I was aware of this,” replied the archbishop with marked satisfaction. “It was doubtless under this diplomatic pressure that Protot declared to me that, if the Commune had taken hostages, it was in obedience to the brutal requirements of the lowest demagogues, and if they should possibly consider an execution necessary, they would choose one or two officers of the peace, or sergents de ville, and by no means a member of the clergy. As for the rest, I have entire confidence in the goodness of God and the testimony of my conscience.”

As Mgr. Darboy ended these words, at about half-past two, the warden, who guarded us, gave the signal for returning to our cells. His confidence astonished me, and would have diminished my apprehensions if, after my transfer to La Roquette, I had

This was on Wednesday, the twenty-fourth of May. Some time after, about seven o’clock, I observed, through the bars of my cell, a strange movement in the large interior court. There was a great difference between Mazas and La Roquette. At Mazas, the prison discipline was in sufficient vigor, but at La Roquette there was no order and no discipline. This prison, placed between the Faubourgs St. Antoine, Ménilmontant, and Charonne, was at the mercy of all the wild beasts of these quarters, who knocked around and roared without any restraint. Some men of sinister appearance went from the office to the western building where the first hostages were kept, some armed with revolvers and others carrying mysterious documents. The director of the prison, with his red girdle and pantaloons, gave, or rather received, orders with an air that might be regarded as embarrassed or satisfied, according to one’s idea of his principles. The bad wardens did not conceal their joy, the good ones disappeared in consternation. A citoyen of imperious manners and wild aspect, before whom some bowed and others trembled, proceeded like a man in a fit of madness or intoxication towards the western building. I had not then sufficient presence of mind to recognize him, but I was convinced afterwards that it was Ferré; others, with less probability, declare it was Raoul Rigault. These two rivals of Robespierre would figure equally well at the post of infamy.

Most of the windows were closed in the first story of the western part facing us, where the principal hostages were incarcerated; a few were open, revealing empty cells. At the same time, the windows of the second and third stories, occupied by those condemned by the court of assize, were filled with prisoners who were wondering, with a lively curiosity, at the meaning of the unusual spectacle which had struck us.

My anxiety became more and more intense, when I saw an officer of the insurgents half open the door that led from the court to the office, and say, with a solemn voice: “Are the hommes de guerre ready?” Without being thoroughly initiated into the military language, I understood they were about to shoot the whole or a part of us. I threw myself on my knees to implore God to grant us all strength and courage. A few minutes past eight, I was stunned by a horrible firing. Six almost simultaneous discharges of chassepots, succeeded by some single reports, resounded in the prison court. A deadly silence succeeded this noise, and revealed to me that only a few steps distant had been committed one of those monstrous crimes that constitute an epoch in the history of the human race.

From the prayers for the dying I passed to the prayers for the dead. Never had I so thoroughly sounded the depths of God’s mercy. I no longer conjured him, but claimed an indemnification, worthy of him, for the victims of so base and execrable an outrage. I never could have survived this excess of man’s iniquity, if I had not felt myself sustained by an assurance of the eternal goodness and justice of God.

When I rose, the mournful noise of the clarions and drums, and the dismal rumbling of a cart towards Charonne, seemed to put an end to this tragedy.

Wednesday night was truly a night chouans at Versailles,” or who refused to die for the Commune under the orders of old criminals, were mercilessly sacrificed. With the sound of drums and trumpets mingled the noise of the carriages that brought the suspected to La Roquette, and carried to Père-la-Chaise those who had been shot, and the bombs à pétrole. At the same time the cemetery battery did not cease its thunder, and the flames that were consuming the monuments of Paris cast their lurid gleams into our cells. Let the reader for a moment take my place, and he will feel that no description could equal so overwhelming a spectacle.

Being on the eastern side of the prison, which has no direct communication with the western, I was still ignorant on Thursday morning of the names of the victims of the night before. Two faithful wardens came at an early hour to announce the fatal news, and give me nearly the same details of this sad drama. According to them, the emissaries of the Commune were the only witnesses of the execution: it was therefore difficult to obtain a precise, and, especially, a complete account. One of these wardens, who went as near as he could to the place of execution, received orders to aid the executioners in placing the bodies upon a cart which was to take them to a corner of Charonne, at the extremity of Père-la-Chaise. It is to his details, and those of other wardens, and the prisoners of the western side, that I owe the following particulars.

An emissary of the préfecture of police presented himself with some armed insurgents in the first story of the western side, uttering horrible threats: “The royalists are assassinating the republicans: it is horrible! it must be stopped!” Then taking a list marked with a red pencil, he cried in a loud voice: “Citoyen Darboy! citoyen Deguerry! citoyen Bonjean! citoyen Ducoudray! citoyen Clerc! citoyen Allard!” They were the six victims given up to the jury of frenzied demagogues. Everybody knows the three first. Père Ducoudray, of the Society of Jesus, was the superior of an educational establishment in the old Rue des Postes, and devoted himself to the formation of good Christians and good Frenchmen; Père Clerc, also a Jesuit, and formerly a naval officer, was one of the directors of the same establishment; and the Abbé Allard, an old apostolic missionary, who had been devoting his time to the service of the ambulances and still wore the armlet and cross of the international society of Geneva.

Each one replied in a firm and resigned voice: “Present.” I learned the next day from Mgr. Surat, the first vicar-general of Paris, that the Jesuit fathers had received two days before some consecrated hosts, and the Fathers Ducoudray and Clerc were able at this critical moment to give themselves the Holy Communion. They also gave him two sacred hosts at the arrival of their murderers, one of which he offered M. Deguerry, who thus met death with the Christian fortitude and the boundless trust that the bread of life confers.

In going down, Mgr. Darboy and M. Bonjean, who showed an invincible firmness to the end, locked arms.

They were all overwhelmed with gross insults on their way to the place of execution. An obscure corner

Their murderers could not have been numerous, or else their state of intoxication and fury must have prevented their correctness of aim. Some of their victims, in fact, received only two shots. When their bodies were discovered, I had that of M. Deguerry examined by three physicians—Drs. de Beauvais, Moissenet, and Raynaud. A round ball had passed through one side of the eye into the skull, where it was imbedded in the fractured bones. It is preserved at the Madeleine. The other ball passed through one of the lungs. The physicians thought that his death must have been instantaneous. At the moment of being shot, M. Deguerry, with an impulse in accordance with his military turn, opened his cassock and exposed his chest to the aim of his murderers; the ball which entered his lung only passed through the back part of his cassock.

The wardens informed me that, before throwing the bodies into the cart, they were stripped of a part of their clothes, which were burned on the place of execution. I can testify to the exactitude of this, having twice seen the spots covered with the burning clothes. I also ascertained that the money of the six victims was afterward stolen from their cells, and their books and papers cast into the fire. Some weeks after a half-burned breviary was seen in one of the closets of the ante-room of La Roquette. It is thus the Commune respected the last wishes and testamentary dispositions of its victims.

Those who were shot on Wednesday and the following days, and all the prisoners whom the committee of public safety reserved for the same fate, were victims of their devotedness to two noble and grand causes. They were persecuted through hatred of religion, the abolition of which the Commune had inscribed in its sacrilegious programme, and through hatred of the country represented by the French army and the national assembly at Versailles, who were defending order, liberty, honor, civilization, and the faith against barbarians.

After the massacre on Wednesday, the hostages could entertain no further illusion as to their fate. This was only the commencement of a bloody drama. Everything convinced me it would only end with the last of the hostages. Then we entered upon a long agony of four days, the sad changes in which no human tongue could describe. I will confine myself to enumerating without comment the most remarkable incidents.

On Thursday noon, we were allowed recreation together in the same court as the day before. Our faces were sadder, but our hearts were as courageous. The laymen manifested a cordial sympathy for the clergy and a like serenity. It was evident that all put their confidence in God—a confidence that is not vain. I conversed twenty minutes with Père Olivaint. Smitten in his dearest affections, he still had a gracious

In the evening we noticed fresh fires in Paris, and learned that the insurgents were setting fire to all the monuments of those quarters where they had been repulsed by the army of Versailles. These fires distressed and exasperated me. Forgetting the danger I was in, I broke out in bitter complaints before my companions, who could not succeed in calming me. I was indebted to the heroes of petroleum, picrate, and glycerine for the only moments of irritation and despondency I felt during my captivity.

That morning they shot M. Jecker, the celebrated Mexican banker, in the court of La Roquette, and in the evening a refactory national guardsman against the outer wall. I comprehended the execution of the latter, but that of M. Jecker would have seemed to me an atrocious logogriph, if we had been on earth and not in the realm of demons. At eight o’clock, a warden notified M. Amodru and myself to descend to be shot. “Finitum est,” “All is finished,” said my kind neighbor to me. We knelt down by the window common to both cells, and gave each other absolution. The prisoners who understood the warden’s order regarded us from their cells with curiosity. The most cynical laughed at the prayers we were making in view of immediate death. I put on my sacerdotal garments, wrote my relatives, friends, and confrères a few farewell lines, and read in my breviary the prayers of the dying. After half an hour, I learned they had made a mistake, and instead of exposing M. Amodru and myself to the range of loaded chassepots, two laymen were to be taken before a court-martial, which amounted to the same thing, if I except a pretence of trial. I learned later, from an under-officer and some sergents de ville, that the agents of the Commune announced, more than once, that prisoners were about to be shot, adding some time after

I passed a part of the night in regarding the fires. The whole horizon was aflame toward Bercy. The battery at Père-la-Chaise, encouraged by the progress of the flames, redoubled its violence. The firing of arms and the booming of the cannon at the same time resounded in the direction of Montmartre and the Hôtel de Ville. I wondered if I was awake or under the influence of a horrible nightmare. A complete exhaustion of physical strength prevented me from fully deciding. I only mention this strange sensation because my companions in captivity also experienced it.

On Friday morning, at an early hour, my neighbor and myself received a visit from one of the subaltern employees of the prison. At first we felt some confidence in him, and we gave him two or three francs a day, as much from a wish to do a kind act, as a reward for his services, which were in a state of project. It did not require profound sagacity to discover that he was at the bottom only a spy and an accomplice of the Commune. The equivocal manner in which he pretended to console us in relating the progress of the Versailles army, showed he had the highest ideas of our simplicity and candor. Finding us more depressed and reserved after the catastrophe of Wednesday, he said to us in that tone, at once bantering and polite, which the Parisian voyou has at command: “Is it possible you give credit to the stories in circulation respecting the death of the Archbishop of Paris and the Curé of the Madeleine? They are simply absurd. Some of the national guards, who had been drinking too much, were amusing themselves in discharging their guns against the prison walls: I assure you, no one was shot.”

Then, knowing we were to undergo the same fate in a few hours, he eagerly proposed to the clergy of our story a lottery which, according to his delicate calculations, would procure him some profits without depriving him of the objects of art he was proud of fabricating. For eight days I was obliged to swallow such humiliations, which revealed poor human nature in quite a new aspect. The selfish proposition of this deceitful employee was rejected promptly, but we concluded to continue our daily gratuity, in gratitude for services he was always promising, and which were never performed.

When he left our story, he always went directly to the office to give an account of what he had seen or heard. We had not only to resist ferocity, but also craftiness and duplicity.

It was in the plans of the Commune that none of the hostages should escape death. The next Sunday, the first object that struck my eyes at the office of La Roquette was the list of their names. There was a horizontal mark against the names of those who were to be shot: when the execution was accomplished, they added a vertical mark, thus forming a cross. Every name had a horizontal line before it. If my memory does not deceive me, they followed the order of the list in the executions.

About two o’clock, three shells from the battery of Père-la-Chaise hit the prison roof only a few mètres above our heads, and covered the court with tiles and fragments of the chimneys. Some of the prisoners protested against the danger of these projectiles exploding in their closed cells and had the doors opened;

The shells that hit our prison were an indication of the rapid progress of the French troops, but this progress threw us into the most perplexing and intolerable of situations. We could only expect our safety from the Versailles army; we ought, then, in consideration of the general interests of civilization, and our own interests, to desire ardently its triumph. But it was no less evident that the nearer the army approached, the more imminent became our end. Thus the perspective which was our only hope of safety, inevitably announced at the same time our destruction. If the illimitable consolations of religion had not raised us above our misfortunes, we should have been a prey to the anticipated horrors of everlasting woe. In such cruel hours we comprehend the words of the God-Man, who, in the garden of Gethsemani and on Golgotha, drank to the dregs the chalice of all humiliations, all sorrows, and every kind of anguish, in order to sanctify them. “My God, my God, why hast thou abandoned me?” should not be separated from these other words, which exclude all despondency and presage a wonderful recompense: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit!”

IV.

LA ROQUETTE—INSURRECTION—DELIVERANCE—CONCLUSION.

The close of the day on Friday was exceedingly gloomy. The same events took place in the interior court of the prison as on Thursday evening. At the sight of the mysterious agent who held a list in his hand, each one said to himself: “My name is probably inscribed on that list: may God have mercy on me!” I again heard the fatal interrogation from the mouth of an insurgent officer: “Are the soldiers at their post?” From the cells in the building opposite some friendly hands indicated to us by signs that the number to be shot amounted to twelve, fifteen, sixteen!... It was hardly a fourth of those immolated to the hatred of the Commune. Unfortunately, the facts that each one witnessed were limited, as our horizon was restricted to the four corners of our cell, or at most to a part of the story we were in: each one, therefore, could only give some particulars of the changes of fortune and the victims executed.

On Saturday morning, one of the employees of the library, who manifested a solicitude beyond all praise, gave me, with tears in his eyes, the most minute details about the extent of the sad event. At five o’clock, an emissary of the Commune entered the first story of the western side, and called out: “Citoyens, attention to the roll: here, fifteen are wanted!” Among these victims were the Jesuit Fathers Olivaint, Caubert, and De Bengy; the four principal Fathers of the Society of Picpus: Abbé Sabattier, the second vicar of Notre Dame de Lorette: Abbé Seigneret, a young pupil of the Seminary of St. Sulpice; and Abbé Planchat, a genuine missionary, who displayed all the zeal of an apostle, not in China or Japan, but among the working-classes of the Faubourg St. Antoine. About forty gendarmes, soldiers, officers of the peace, and Parisian guardsmen were also summoned, the most of whom were imprisoned in the first story of our building to the east. They were conducted to Belleville, preceded by drums and trumpets, into one of the courts of the Rue Haxo. All the long way, a furious crowd, among whom

The most incredulous saw their last hour approaching, and I prepared myself once more to die. The insurgents stole or burned the things left in the cells. I placed my watch, papers, and my testamentary dispositions in the care of the employee at the library, with the names of the persons to whom he was to transmit them. I earnestly desired my body might receive a suitable burial, and, not knowing what means to take that it might be recognized, I communicated my anxiety to the Abbé Amodru, my neighbor. He had foreseen, and provided for, the difficulty, and, following his example, I wrote my name in legible characters upon several small slips of paper, which I put into my shoes and the different pockets of my habit.

It was the eve of Whit-Sunday. Having no longer the strength to kneel, I seated myself on my bed, and took sometimes my breviary, and then The Following of Christ in my hands. I prayed God for courage and a spirit of sacrifice. In reading the Thirtieth Psalm, I was struck with these words: “Let me not be confounded, O Lord, for I have called upon thee!... Thou shalt protect them in thy tabernacle from the contradiction of tongues. Blessed be the Lord, for he hath shown his wonderful mercy to me, a fortified city.” But I immediately distrusted the hopes that so readily pervaded my soul I wished to remain facing the sad realities of death.

The constantly increasing noise of the firing announced the approach of the contending parties. The barricades of the Château d’Eau had been valiantly taken by the Versailles troops: the Commune, in session at the Mairie du Prince Eugène, was obliged to beat a retreat. By a great effort, the scattered members sucoeeded in gaining the office of La Roquette, to conduct the labors of the cosmopolitan banditti. Between the army of deliverance and us were still those men of blood, whose last ravings were so many decrees of death and incendiarism. It is said that Ferré sprang like a tiger about to lose his prey, crying in a hoarse voice: “Make haste! shoot them, the chouans! Cut their throats, the robbers! do not leave one standing! Citoyens and citoyennes of the faubourgs, come and avenge your sons and your fathers, basely assassinated!” The unhappy men had no time to lose; the Versailles troops, on the one hand, were entering the Boulevard du Prince Eugène; on the other, they surrounded Père-la-Chaise; but, by an intolerable fatality, the source of our safety was at the same time that of our destruction.

A few minutes past three, the heavy bolts of our cells flew back with unaccustomed quickness. I was on my knees, saying, with a voice almost extinct, the office of the Eve of Whit-Sunday. My neighbor quickly opened the door of my cell. “Courage,” he said, “it is now our turn; they are going to take us all down to shoot us!”

“Courage,” I replied, “and may the will of God be done!” I had on my clerical costume, and advanced into the corridor where priests, soldiers, and national guards were all mingled together. The priests and national guards appeared calm and

A voice with a metallic ring suddenly rose above this confused noise: “My friends, those ignoble villains have already killed too many; do not allow yourselves to be murdered; join me; let us resist; let us fight. Rather than give you up, I will die with you!” It was the voice of the warden Pinet. This generous son of Lorraine, aghast at so many crimes, could no longer stifle his indignation. Charged to open our cells slowly and deliver us two by two to the insurgents, who were waiting for us below, he had fastened the door of the third story behind him, rapidly opened our cells to advise us and aid in organizing a resistance, ready to sacrifice his life in aiding us to save ours. At first, I could not believe in so much heroism. The Abbé Amodru spoke in his turn, and joined his protestations to those of Pinet: “Let us not submit to be shot, my friends, let us defend ourselves. Have confidence in God; he is for us and with us; he will save us!”

There was a difference of opinion; some hesitated. To defend ourselves, objected one, would be madness; we should only incur a more cruel death. Instead of being simply shot, we shall be slaughtered by a mob or consumed in the flames. “Let us call up the national guards,” exclaimed a simple fellow (I had not believed such naiveté possible at La Roquette), “and prove to them that we are honest men, and not robbers and assassins.” “It is not our lives they wish,” cried a soldier, whose impartial truthfulness renders it obligatory on me to repeat his words, and who had as little discernment as moral sense, “it is only the curés they have a grudge against; let us not expose our lives in trying to defend theirs!”

I had not yet uttered a word, but followed with an anxiety, easy to comprehend, the phases of this strange situation. Some of my brethren asked what there was to fear or to hope for. “The sergents de ville who are below are disposed to defend themselves,” cried the warden Pinet, whom the hesitation rendered more energetic and more eloquent. “Do not allow yourselves to be shot by that band of robbers.” I was already convinced that resistance, the success of which I thought more than improbable, was nevertheless the most suitable measure to be taken. From the eighteenth of March I had not ceased to protest against the silence and giving up of honest men to criminals; and to show myself to the end faithful to my programme, I emerged from my apparent inaction. M. Walbert, an old officier de paix, and the Abbé Carré, the Vicar of Belleville, suggested that a hole should be made in the floor to open communication with the sergents de ville imprisoned on the second story, and they immediately set to work with boards and iron rods that we wrenched from our beds. I joined them. I, who in the morning had no longer strength enough to stand, and who had not yet eaten a mouthful of bread, broke boards in pieces and twisted off the rods with irresistible facility! In five minutes a large opening was made between the second and third stories. sergents de ville were ready to pay dearly for their lives. The under-officer Teyssier hoisted himself through the opening to aid Pinet in the command of the insurrection.

The interior court of the prison was crowded by an abject multitude come to witness our last sufferings. It is easier to imagine than to depict the appearance and the threats of this crowd. We put mattresses against the windows as a protection against bullets. There was a young man in the crowd who ordered us to come down, and aimed at us with a coolness that attracted my attention. “See that wretch,” said the warden Pinet to me, “he is one of the two condemned to death by the court of assize of the Seine!.”

“The barricade is on fire,” exclaimed some soldiers. “We are stifled! Help!”

Two enormous barricades had been constructed against the two doors of the story, with our beds and the flagstones torn up from the floor. I ran to the barricade on fire, and found myself in a cloud of smoke. “Do not be alarmed,” said a soldier, whose skill and presence of mind I admired, “I constructed the barricade, and took care to place only mattresses in front: bring me some water.” In fifteen minutes the fire was extinguished. I heard the insurgents, who sometimes threatened to set fire to our building, to blow it up, or order the batteries of Père-la-Chaise to fire at it: sometimes they perfidiously cried: “Vive la ligne! surrender, and we will set you free!” The massacres of those who trusted to their promises proved how sincere they were.

At that moment, something as unexpected as fortunate took place in the prison. While we were organizing a desperate resistance, and the soldiers, more bold than prudent, were crying, “Let us go down to the office, and boldly attack the Commune!” the Communists, frightened at our resistance and the rapid progress of the French army along the Boulevard du Prince Eugène, hastily fled from La Roquette in the direction of Belleville. The rabble, astonished at this sudden removal, were convinced of the great danger, and fled after them. The prisoners were restored to liberty, and naturally cried: Vive la République! vive la Commune!

Availing themselves of this confusion, the lay hostages who were to have been shot with us escaped from La Roquette: almost all succeeded in crossing the barricades or hiding till the next day in the late haunts of insurrection. Some of the clergy imitated them; others, particularly Mgr. Surat, who was dressed as a layman, hesitated. The wardens, from motives more praiseworthy than prudent, urged them to fly. This course seemed to me disastrous. The neighborhood of the prison was in the hands of the insurgents, whose irritation knew no bounds. I thought it my duty to warn the first vicar-general of Paris, and said to him through the bars: “Take care; to leave is certain death; to remain, uncertain!” I ascertained afterwards that I had not been heard. In going out of the prison, he was murdered in a frightful manner, with M. Bécourt, the curé of Bonne Nouvelle; M. Houillon, a missionary of the Missions Etrangères, and a lay prisoner. Some priests succeeded in concealing themselves in the Faubourg St. Antoine, and some returned to the prison.

Notwithstanding the departure of the insurgents who were to put us to death, we were still exposed to sudden attack and every danger while the prison gates were unfastened. I therefore protested in violent terms to the two wardens, who, frightened

They warmly reproached me for an obstinacy they thought must prove fatal to us, but they faithfully obeyed my orders.

At eleven o’clock at night, the firing, which was not far off, ceased. The frenzied demagogues without uttered powerless threats against us. We kept a strict guard, and seriously began to hope. At a quarter before three, the firing recommenced toward Père-la-Chaise. Every hour now seemed an age. There was a formidable barricade in the Rue de la Roquette in front of the prison. Attacked on the side of the Bastille, it would have opposed a formidable resistance on account of its steepness, but, owing to the winding and concentric course of the French army, the insurgents, stormed from the heights occupied by our troops, left the barricade in disorder, and a battalion of marines took possession of La Roquette. Our resistance, that at first was only madness, ended miraculously. It was the great festival of Whit-Sunday. After four days of the greatest agony that can be imagined, we were, contrary to all expectation, restored to life and liberty.

While some of the prisoners cried, “Vive l’armee! Vive la France!” the most of them, affected by want of sleep and the mental torture that no human tongue could express, persisted in regarding our liberators as insurgents disguised as marines. Then began a singular negotiation between the prisoners and the marines, in which the former, more incredulous than St. Thomas, saw nothing but snares, and the latter with immovable patience submitted to requirements that were almost puerile. The arms, flags, books, and papers of the battalion were demanded. The marines consented, but the prisoners, blinded and confused, were still far from being reassured concerning the identity of the marines.

Some of my companions and myself, who could not believe a disguise could be so perfect, were distressed at this prolonged hesitation, far from flattering to our courageous deliverers. We induced our companions to allow us to go out, that they might judge from our reception what course to take themselves. At the sight of the marines who rush toward us, not to massacre us, but to shake our hands and rejoice over our deliverance, the confidence of our companions revived, and they came to receive their share of cordial sympathy.

My surprise was great when I heard General Vinoy’s aide-de-camp eagerly inquire for Mgr. Darboy and M. Deguerry. “Where are they? How do they do?” It was four days since they were massacred by the Commune, and the frightful reality was still unknown at Versailles and Paris. Knowing the profound affection of the brave General Vinoy for the Archbishop of Paris, his aide-de-camp begged me to give him some correct details, which he immediately despatched to the general and to Versailles.

They were still fighting furiously around La Roquette. We were obliged to wait nearly an hour at the office, where we found, in fearful disorder, cartridges, cigars, swords, guns, proscription lists, proclamations, and the decrees of the expiring Commune, never to be issued.

Accompanied by an escort bearing St. Antoine, the Jardin des Plantes, and the quais on the left bank of the river, toward our homes. At each step we had to struggle against the most poignant emotions. Here, in the boulevards, were heaps of men and horses who had been killed, with pools of blood beside piles of cartridges and broken chassepots. There, trees were broken down and houses shattered by shells. The few inhabitants we met seemed confounded and in despair. Further on, we uttered a cry of horror at the sight of the Hôtel de Ville, the Palais de Justice, the entrance of the Rue du Bac, the Tuileries, and the palaces of the Conseil d’Etat and of the Légion d’Honneur in flames or in ashes.

In the Rue des Saintes-Pères, a gentleman and lady whom I knew, but whose names I could not recall, stopped to ask if I was one of the Jesuit Fathers, and if I came from La Roquette. They wished news of Père Caubert. I informed them he was shot on Friday with Père Olivaint. At this, the gentleman raised his eyes to heaven, while the lady made an effort to overcome her emotion. “You see before you,” said he, “Père Caubert’s sister!” It was M. Lauras, one of the directors of the Orleans Railway, and Madame Lauras, née Caubert.

I accompanied the soldiers, who had participated in my captivity, to the Palais Bourbon, and after a fraternal grasp of the hand I turned toward the Madeleine. The Place de la Concorde was upset, and a part of the Rue Royale burned down with petroleum. I found the Madeleine standing, and my residence in the Rue de la Ville-l’Evêque, but both injured by the firing. No one knew of, and what was more strange, no one would believe in, the horrible deaths of Mgr. Darboy and M. Deguerry. My two confrères at the Madeleine expressed the same doubt, the same incredulity. When at vespers I was about to ascend the pulpit to recommend the victims to the prayers of the faithful, they advised me to defer it, hoping the fatal news would not be confirmed.

I had told it to more than one hundred persons, begging them to inform, in their turn, the other parishioners of the Madeleine, but when, in an affecting but cautious and brief manner, I requested the faithful gathered at the foot of the altar to pray for the pastor of the diocese and the curé of the parish, basely shot on the twenty-fourth of May, in the prison of La Roquette, a cry of grief and horror escaped from every soul; the men and the women rose up in confusion, as if to protest against it; the gravest and most reverential for a moment seemed to lose their balance. Among the confused voices around the pulpit, these words were the most distinct: “No, no, such a crime is not possible!”

My moral conclusions will be simple and brief. It would be an insult to the reader to dwell on the great lessons to be drawn from such sorrowful and overwhelming catastrophes.

First Lesson. Divine Providence never chastised and enlightened a nation by severer blows. It behooves us therefore to consider the grave and exceptional malady that is afflicting society, and seek an efficacious and permanent remedy for it. We are all suffering from the evil, and we all should be preoccupied about the means of recovery.

Some days after leaving La Roquette, I wished to revisit the places where I had been imprisoned, in order to retrace, with precision, the juges d’instruction on the bench of the Seine. I visited with him the places of the greatest interest, Mgr. Darboy’s cell, and the spot on the circular road where the murder of the six principal hostages took place. The warden took us to Troppmann’s cell. “I supposed, till within a few days,” said I to the magistrate of the Seine, “that criminals like Troppmann were of a rare species that required fifty or sixty years to develop in the lowest grades of society. After the realities I witnessed at La Roquette, I am convinced they are to be found by thousands in Paris.” The juge d’instruction replied that all the magistrates who studied the mysteries of those grades had the same conviction. It would therefore be simply folly not to consider the remedy most suitable to counteract such a disorder.

Second Lesson. In the horrible catastrophe that has just revealed so many material or moral sores, every one is more or less responsible and culpable. Every one should say his meâ culpâ, and seek to become better. The most guilty are certainly the turbulent working classes, the demagogues, the International, the secret societies, outlaws, and governments without morality, but they alone are not guilty. Literary men who diffuse in their pernicious publications the poison of scepticism and immorality; artists who are wanting in respect and decency; the journals of the rich and influential bourgeoisie, which defend the principles of material conservation, while by their attacks on the Holy See, the clergy, and the church generally, they sap the very foundations of morality; politicians who brutally proclaim, with a view to the rewards and the gratification of their cupidity, the primacy of might against right—should disavow and correct their errors. Pious people and the clergy should redouble their solicitude and energy in extending and strengthening their influence, particularly in the most populous districts. There are no other means of safety.

Third Lesson. The reign of the Commune has revealed a frightful number of wicked men in society capable of every excess. They have trampled under foot the very first principles of natural order and social life, which the Reign of Terror would have feared to disregard. The executions at La Roquette, without preparation, without discussion or preliminary trial, were a thousand times more monstrous than the executions of the Revolutionary tribunal. In 1793, the Dantons and Robespierres were imitators, more or less imposing, of the Catilines of ancient Rome: in 1871, we have had Raoul Rigault and Ferré, the Catilines of the gutter. Ferocious beasts are not reasoned with—they are muzzled. Society therefore should have a power of legal repression proportioned to the dangers that threaten it.

Jesus Christ and his Gospel are still the salt of the earth and the light of the world. To withdraw society from this divine and guiding influence would condemn it to sorrow, crime, and shame.

GOD IS OUR AID.

A CHRISTMAS STORY OF ‘67.

[82] “Quoniam omnes dii Gentium dæmonia!” So, while the stormy gusts swept up the avenue, and the lowering sky increased the night, the old man gathered his failing strength for the last great effort. “Hold me, William, support me ere it is too late. Quick! give me the pen, I must sign while yet my hand has power.” Then they put the pen in his trembling hand, his stalwart son supporting him, and all the fiercer passions played upon that cold face, and in those cruel eyes, as he wrote the signature disinheriting the child of the wife whose fair face looked in silent reproach from the portrait opposite. And William Stanfield folded the paper and locked it Mayflower stock. But Thomas laid his boyish love to rest within the quiet “God’s-acre” of the village church, and then wandered to New York to build his fortune. Fate did not withhold her favors from this sturdy son, who met and conquered her; for he was determined to succeed, and did!

And strange to say that at this time human softness yet lived amid the dross and corruption of the world, for Thomas Stanfield was by no means indifferent to certain influences. So, one bright Christmas morning, he found himself in New Orleans, and, stranger still to relate, his partner, Mons. Crécy, persuaded him to listen to the magnificent service at —— Church. The music was exquisitely appealing, thrilling the nobler attributes of man’s better nature; and so this worldly materialist forgot to speculate or dream of gold for two long hours, and sat rapt, while his soul absorbed its divine inspiration. If there is a season when the hardness of humanity dissolves and merges into its spiritual essence, it is when music gently lifts it to its higher affinities, and brings it en rapport with God. And thus the man of gold listened to the soft soprano, and far beyond the latticed grating caught a glimpse of dark eyes that haunted him long after the anthem ended. And when Etienne Crécy asked him to dine at the “Grove,” his plantation near the city, he accepted, scarcely realizing what he did till he found himself behind a pair of splendid bays, with New Orleans far in the distance.

The balmy, bright-skied South always brought a pleasant Christmas, for oranges hung golden on the trees that formed the grove leading to the house, and the sweet breath of the blossoms perfumed the air. This to the Northerner, accustomed to ice and snow at this season, was a most enjoyable contrast; and his stroll over the beautiful grounds afforded real pleasure. Then they rested on the broad piazza, or gallery, as it is called in Louisiana, and talked of business details, when suddenly Mons. Crécy discovered that his guest was strangely distrait, for a clear, soft voice was sounding, to an accompanying harp, and Mr. Stanfield recognized the same silver tones that had absorbed him during the morning service. “Qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe deprecationem nostram,” fell earnest and tender on his ear—it was, it must be, the same, and he turned to M. Crécy. “It is my daughter Madelaine,” said the old man; and at dinner he saw the same fawn-eyes that had first glanced from behind the grating in the old church. And those shy, sweet eyes found a place in the heart of the cold New Englander, and in the spring he bore her a bride to his beautiful home in New York.

Three years passed, and only the step-son shared their household. Some trouble attended the marriage, for the parish priest, Father Jean, at first refused to unite her with such an obstinate heretic. But the maiden loved this son of the Puritans, so either her gentle influence or his pertinacious perseverance overcame I will leave her to God. May our Holy Mother care for her!”

Then the gentle soul departed with the cross upon her bosom, and those last words on her lips, and many, many years after Thomas Stanfield heard repeated in his dreams, “God shall help her.”

And a judgment rested on the rich man’s harvest, for this warm-hearted, earnest Southern wife was very dear to him. But the child grew in loveliness, and her impulsive nature felt the need of more than her cold father accorded. Firm as he had been in reference to the child, it seemed strange that he evinced so much indifference to her education, for though she had been baptized in his own church, and sent to Protestant schools, yet very little care was bestowed upon her religious instruction. When she grew old enough, she accompanied her father to church, and through the long sermons her weary little eyes would often close. She went merely from habit, because her father wished her with him, for there was nothing in the cold, formal ritual, if that bare service can be called a ritual, to attract or warm her heart; but it was part of her duty to go; and so she went. Thus her childhood passed, and so her girlhood opened. Children rarely exert the reasoning faculties, accepting with boundless trust what is proposed by their elders. Faith and confidence are largely developed, therefore a grave record is written of those intrusted with these young immortals. But when reason waked and the heart expanded, this warm loving nature asked for more than what was offered, and her soul felt starved, hungry for the food it found not. Thomas Stanfield was now devoted to his business, from nine in the morning, when his coupé drove him to his office, to six in the evening, when his key opened the massive door of his palace—his whole soul entered into the fascination, the strife for increasing millions. And at night, as he sat silent in his high carved chair, the closed eyes and set features told that the scheming still continued. Was it strange, then, that the young girl yearned for something more than her home offered? Well, one September evening, soon after their return from the country, the servant handed in a card, bearing the simple inscription, “Kenneth C. Arnaud.” Then Mr. Stanfield, disturbed in the midst of some speculation, testified by a grunt his welcome to a distant relative of his wife. “This is Miss Stanfield, my daughter,” he said, as he seemed to remember that another person occupied the room. The

The Advent season came—a time of joy and gladness in the churches that celebrate this season, but scarcely remembered or noticed in dissenting congregations; and on the first Sunday that Mr. Arnaud formed one of the family party, he proposed that Madelaine should accompany him to St. ——’s church, as the music was always attractive there. Old Mr. Stanfield was half asleep, when the name of this Roman Catholic church startled him. “Only to listen to the music, papa!” she laughingly replied to his frown, and she went. The ritual was new to her, the service a strange mystery, but she patiently watched it all, listening to the exquisite bursts from the choir. Then sounded the “Alma” with its sweet cadence, and the heart of the young girl thrilled within her. She could not explain, but she felt a strange attraction that drew her against her will to this beautiful ritual. Then came the lovely benediction, and the devotion of the kneeling hundreds, the solemn censer’s cloudlike offering, the elevation, and the echoing bell, at which a hush swept like an angel’s presence over the rapt thousands. It was all a lovely dream to this young enthusiast, and, closing her eyes, troops of seraphim and cherubim seemed prolonging the words—

She returned to her home filled with a new life, and for the first time her soul felt its thralls. She was very quiet that night, and even her father remarked the change. Poor child! she had needed all that had been denied to her, and the starved spirit was just tasting of the food immortal. Is it not often thus in life, that a charm, a mere instinct, leads us to the path for which we have been vainly striving? Give me thine heart! was the cry of the Holy Mother to the footsore and weary, to all who sought consolation from that loving breast; and the listening angels caught the echo of that cry, and bore it up to the great Pontiff, who sends the Comforter to spread the white-winged dove on the troubled soul that calls for peace!

The spring came, after the long, cold winter, and Kenneth Arnaud asked the old man for his gentle daughter. But Mr. Stanfield had always regarded Madelaine as a mere child, and seemed shocked and angry at the request. He had forgotten that eighteen years had passed since his soft-eyed wife had whispered, “I leave her to God”—and now a Catholic had asked his child in marriage! He did not answer the young man for several weeks, not till the sweet eyes of his daughter had been dimmed with many tears, and her childish heart had felt, ay, painfully felt, the first great sorrow of her life.

The old man looked him steadily in the eyes, and replied:

“And the great unhappiness of that union was the education of the children that were to come. What say you of this?”

“That, your daughter shall determine.”

“You can speak this with safety, Mr. Arnaud, for my daughter has proved a quick pupil.”

“I can scarcely comprehend you, Mr. Stanfield, and, as a gentleman, will not understand the accusation implied.”

“I do not accuse you of influencing my daughter, but her bias in favor of the Romish Church is a subject that cannot afford me happiness.”

The conversation was serious, and very painful to both, and at last Mr. Stanfield closed the interview with this remark: “As my daughter’s happiness is concerned, I cannot withhold my consent, but I wish you to clearly understand that, when she renounces the church of her forefathers, she also relinquishes all right to her father’s estate.”

A proud smile curled the young man’s lips as he replied, “I feel privileged to claim her, even though the conditions were far more capable of inflicting unhappiness.”

And so they were married, and the old man and his son William bowed before the golden calf, and worshipped it, offering their souls as homage at its shrine.

For the young wife, one brief year of happiness passed, and yet there was unrest even then within her soul, for she craved with hungry longing the new life which she feared to taste, because the ties binding her to her father appealed to her heart, and she dreaded an anger which she knew would never forgive what he considered so fearful an error.

But one cold morning in the winter of ‘61, the telegraph bore to New York tidings of the secession of Louisiana, then the sons of the sunny South rallied to her standard, and for four long years a bloody war desolated that section. She, the young wife, had never given her thoughts to politics, nor did she understand why hate and bitterness waged with such deadly strife between the two portions of a country which she so dearly loved; but her husband decided for her, and, feeling that her life was only a part of his, she followed. And those were years fraught with agony—years that recorded suffering that aged more than time had power to accomplish; for over each battlefield brooded a great host of prayer—prayer born of love intensified, and of partings which would know only the meeting above; and the race schooled by those years grew, developed, lived, more than generations ordinarily experience in a whole lifetime.

Col. Arnaud won a soldier’s reputation, and the autumn of ‘64 found him, with his fine regiment, encamped a few miles below the Confederate capital. Madelaine soon followed him to Richmond, bringing her little family, her boy Kenneth and a baby daughter. The winter was very trying to this delicate woman, for the city was crowded with refugees from all parts of the Confederacy; every square inch was occupied, and therefore comfortable accommodations were impossible to find. Then the depreciated currency rendered the price of necessities almost fabulous, so that barely to live required great sacrifice and control. But the courageous

Poor young thing—she little realized how literally she had followed the Scriptures, for she had forsaken all things, and he, her brave husband, was all she had to cling to; and now—but she was too truly a woman for control, and she fainted when she read the cruel words that told of her husband’s fate. A night of horror followed, and the roll of the ambulance in the early gray of the next morning startled her from her troubled sleep. They, those of his brigade, in their faded gray bore him to the small chamber where his young wife waited, and pale and ghastly she saw him laid upon the bed, where he was soon to sleep the long pulseless sleep. All that glory could render to sweeten the pain of dying was offered, for the journals rang with the grand charge he had led, and his deeds of daring were as household words in the crowded Confederate capital. But the great edict had gone forth, and the priest of his church came to offer the last consolations.

“My own true wife,” and he summoned the bowed figure, the frail girl-woman who knelt beside him. The sweet eyes were dim with tears, and the voice was tremulous with passionate grief. His left arm drew her to him, for the right was crushed and powerless. “I am about to ask a brave act from you, my darling; do you think that you can please me?”

“Ask me anything, Kenneth, only stay with me. Oh! do not leave me yet,” and burning tears blinded her.

“‘My ways are not thy ways, nor my thoughts thy thoughts’: do you remember these words, my own wife? And then—only a little while, when we shall meet where the for evermore will indeed be eternal! But not of this did I wish to speak, Elaine, but”—and he hesitated—“if my faith could be taught to my little ones?”

She did not reply at first, but, with one gaze of devoted, earnest love, she turned, and kneeling by his side, with the weak precious hand clasped within her own, she repeated: “And receive, O Lord, thy servant into thy holy church, for which her heart hungers.” And he answered, “Amen!”

But this was no sudden desire influenced by her devotion to her husband; for, six years before, when she had listened to the sweet vesper service, the latent life had wakened, and the slumber had seen sleep no more, but the message, “Wake to thy salvation!” electrified her soul, and her whole nature thrilled its amen there; since then she had been peculiarly situated, and shrank from provoking anger in her father, as she realized how very stern he could be when he felt himself aggrieved. But now her heart told her she must no longer hesitate, the great crisis asked for action, and she felt that all worldly considerations must be forgotten when her husband, and her own

Only a few days after, she laid her husband to rest beneath the poplars at “Holleywood,” where many of his comrades were lying; and then came the gloomy, stormy March, and the sad April when the snowy flag was folded, and it was during this season that the widowed mother was received into her husband’s church.

The war had closed, and we all remember the fearful wreck that followed when Madelaine Arnaud found herself battling with the grim wolf whose shadow darkened her door. Her husband’s fortune was all gone, and the delicate, dependent woman felt that she had but little to hope for from her father; still she would not believe that he could entirely forsake her, even though she had become a member of the church his soul abhorred. So she wrote in her extremity and asked for advice. Many anxious days and nights passed, and no letter came; a fortnight intervened, when, one morning, she opened the envelope handed to her by the postman, and read:

“You have chosen your way in life, and, when you forsook your father’s faith, he also separated from one who had joined herself to idols. I enclose all that you may ever claim from me.

“Thomas Stanfield.”

She found enclosed the last note written by her mother, only a few hours before her death, and a silver crucifix, with the name “Madelaine Crécy, La.,” inscribed on the back or flat side of the cross.

She was very young to be left so entirely alone, for she was not yet twenty-five, and two children depended on her for support. What could she do, and how must she act? In her agony, she cried, “Save me, O Father, for without thine aid I am lost!” Then the crucifix fell from her letter, and, clasping it, she drew her boy to her, and, kneeling, prayed: “Lord, thy enemies and mine have risen up against me: I therefore cast myself at thy feet to implore thy succor.”

The soft eyes of the little one gazed into her own, and, nestling closer, he asked:

“What makes mamma so sad?”

There are seasons in life when suffering is too great for expression, when tears refuse relief, and the overcharged heart, paralyzed by pain, seems incapable of pulsation. Then even speech fails; and the poor, desolate woman only pressed her child closer, and appealed to her God for protection.

Thus days passed, and she seemed unable to act, for at the South all was poverty and desolation, while she dared not anticipate what awaited her in New York. But the few dollars were growing less, and her children required food, so she decided to try the great city, and thither with her faithful nurse she journeyed. Her mother’s note gave her strength, and she often re-read the faint tracery on the faded paper.

“For, my darling child” (the note read), “should you ever wander into the dear fold of your mother’s church, feel always that my blessing will rest upon you, and though I may not live to guard you, yet my prayer will be then as it is now for God to be with you.

“Madelaine Crecy Stanfield.”

And though she did feel crushed and desolate on that stormy September evening which found her in the great

It was very hard to realize that her father accumulated useless thousands and lived in princely style at the other end of the city, while, only because she believed in her mother’s faith, she must suffer and toil with her little ones, needing comfort, and often even bread. Then the old man died, and, ere he died, the scene with which this story opens shamed his last hours.

But the exposure of three winters told on this delicate woman, and, when she felt her strength waning, all the horrors of starvation frightened her; for she knew that there were none to help her. She had moved still lower down-town, and into a smaller room, and there, with her faithful nurse, she endured life. But then there came a time when, though the will is strong to do, the physique fails to support, and the brave heart, struggling to conquer, feels despair steeling its vitals, and thus it was with Madelaine. The autumn of 1867 set in early, and November was cold and cruel to the poor. She, weaker than she had been, felt her slight unheeded cough increase, and, when December came, was too ill for any exertion. Bitterly the winter opened, snow covered the city, the wind keen and merciless swept the island, and thus the Christmas week found her with the little ones dependent, and she utterly helpless. The last penny had been expended, and the children were wailing with hunger.

Kenneth had looked into her own tearful eyes, and whispered, “Darling mamma, I will pray to Our Lady, and she will ask God to help you.” She only kissed her brave, trustful child, but had no strength for utterance. So, when the chill night wrapped the city and darkened the gloomy chamber, the child picked up his mother’s rosary, and, throwing it

The dawn was fast breaking over the city when the child kissed her, and said, “She has heard my prayer, mamma, for I dreamed that a beautiful angel like the picture in your prayer-book came to me, and said, ‘God will help her!’—and does not that mean you, mamma?”

“I hope that our kind Father will help us, my darling; therefore we must try to deserve his help.”

“Oh! he will help you, mamma, and I will help you, too.”

The day wore away, the last slice had been divided, and there was literally nothing else in the house. Hunger, starvation, was before them, and God, only God, could help them.

The snow fell heavily, the wind blew, and even the elements seemed warring against her, for she had not even fuel to keep off the cold.

Two o’clock chimed from Trinity, and, turning, she missed Kenneth. He was now eight years old, and often went out alone, but, with an instinct plainer than words, her heart rose to warn her of danger.

Three, four, five o’clock came, but still the child did not return. The lamps glared in the dark streets, and the night seemed too cold for human life—when—crash! a shriek, and a pair of horses dashed madly down the streets, throwing the occupants of the coach senseless upon the sidewalk. A crowd soon gathered, and bore the crushed and suffering man into the gloomy room where the sick woman lay. Her room opened on the street, and so they laid him on the small bed where the nurse slept.

“Bring a light,” sounded a gruff voice.

“Don’t you see dat de poor chile has no light for herself? Stonishing de fools dat libs in dese parts!”

A kind voice asked, “Is there no money? Take this and buy a candle.” The speaker was a shabbily-dressed man, but the whole aspect showed that he had known better days. He remained with the injured man, and while they go to find a light I leave them...

The snow was falling in great white feathery flakes, covering the dark alleys and darker tenements with its soft downy covering, and the little ragged, barefooted gamins of the great city were shrieking and screaming with delight; but not to build mimic forts or to join the army of snow-ballers did our little wanderer pause. “Mamma shall have some money,” he said, “and I will begin to work for it, so I will go to the streets where the fine houses are, and there the men will give me work.” Only eight years old was this little soldier in the grand army, but his noble face was radiant with the workings of his soul, which no poverty could injure. His little clothes were patched and scanty, and his poor little frozen toes came through the holes in his worn shoes; but the eyes shone with a light that could not be dimmed, and the firmly-set lips told that he was quite determined to do his best on that afternoon. At first he shrank from the cutting wind that swept from the East River, but, with hands in his pockets and cap pulled down, he ran on till he came to Broadway. Crowded with the happy crowd of the vast metropolis, the great highway was gay with bright faces on this eve of the feast of joy. Windows bright with presents for the favored children of fortune, shops thronged by smiling mothers eager

This time the policeman came up, and taking him by the arm gruffly ordered him to move on. And thus, on the eve of this blessed festival, when the great city joyed in each household, there was no grain for this wee waif, no crumb for the little estray, who was struggling against the power of the ebb which fate had sent to test his strength for the hereafter. On, on past the Fifth Avenue Hotel, through Madison Square, glancing at the glittering icicles or gleaming snow-drifts, shivering over the frozen pavements, on he travelled, faintly trying for that which seemed for ever denied to him.

“I will find it for her,” he said, “for the beautiful angel, our Holy Mother, told me that she should be taken care of. I see her now far up in the clouds.” And up in the leaden sky, far beyond the pure, beautiful flakes, he gazed, half-hoping that the Mother of Christ would smile on him again. And did she not even then hover over the young boy-warrior? Did she not pray that he, too, might be strengthened in this hard fight which his infant powers essayed? Adjuvabit eam Deus![83] the dying mother had prayed, and his promises would not fail. At last, far up the avenue, when the cold, shadowy twilight stole on the great city, he paused before a stately mansion. Curtains of silk and costly lace draped the windows, and liveried servants were sitting on the box of the handsome coach awaiting the master’s coming. Then the heavy door of massive bronze opened, and the master slowly descended the broad steps.

“Oh! you will help me, won’t you? Please give me some work, for I want to earn money for my mother!”

“Send that little beggar away,” was the irritable rebuff, and the footman flung him aside, not heeding where he fell. The carriage rolled away, and no thought was given to the small human bundle, roughly hurled from the rich man’s path. Then night darkened over the city, and the stars, God’s eternal sentinels, guarded earth as they had done eighteen centuries before when they watched the birth of the incarnate God. And beneath the same shimmering light the boy-warrior lay, all worsted in the strife, as thousands had sunk before, and all unconscious of the cruel hearts that still pulsed on. The torn little cap had fallen off, and the fair golden curls shaded the pale, childish face, turned upward as if in appeal to the Blessed Mother he had seen in his dreams. Was she watching still, and did her kind eyes see the crucifix clutched in the poor cold hands—the crucifix with the dead Christ, whose birth the morrow would celebrate? But the soft feathery flakes fell steadily on, covering the sweet face of the little one. Ah! God of