PART XI.

I.

Let us return to Lourdes. Time had passed, and human industry had been at work. The surroundings of the Grotto, where the Blessed Virgin had appeared, had changed their former aspect. Without losing anything of its grandeur, this savage spot had put on a pleasing aspect. Yet unfinished, but fairly alive with workmen, a superb church, proudly crowning the Massabielle rocks, was rising joyously to heaven. The lofty heights, so abrupt and uncultivated, where formerly the feet of the mountaineers could scarcely descend, were covered with a greensward and planted with shrubs and flowers. Among dahlias and roses, daisies and violets, beneath the shade of acacias and cytisuses, a path, broad as the highway, wound in sinuous curves from the church to the Grotto.

The Grotto was enclosed like a chancel by an iron railing. From the roof a golden lamp had been suspended. On the rocks, which had been pressed by Mary’s sacred feet, clusters of tapers burned day and night. Outside the enclosure the miraculous spring fed three bronze lavers. A canal, screened from sight by a little building, afforded a chance for those invalids who wished to be bathed in this blessed water. The mill-race of Savy had changed its bed, having been led into the Gave, further up. The Gave itself had withdrawn somewhat, to give room for a fine road which leads to the Massabielle Rocks. Below, on the banks of the river, the ground had been levelled, and formed an extensive lawn and walk, shaded by elms and poplars.

All these changes had been accomplished and were still going on amid the incessant concourse of the faithful. The copper coin, thrown by popular faith into the grotto—the ex-votos of so many invalids who had been cured, of so many hearts who had been consoled, of so many souls reawakened to truth and life, alone defrayed the cost of these gigantic labors, which approaches the sum of two million francs. When God, in his bounty, vouchsafes to call men to co-operate in any of his works, he does not employ soldiers, or tax-gatherers, or constables to collect the impost—he accepts from his creatures only a voluntary assistance. The Master of the universe repudiates constraint, for he is the God of free souls; he does not consent to receive anything which is not spontaneous and offered with a cheerful heart.

Thus the church was gradually rising, thus the river and the millstream gave way, hillsides were levelled, trees were planted, and pathways traced around the now famous rocks where the Mother of Christ had manifested her glory to the eyes of mortals.

II.

Encouraging the laborers, superintending everything, suggesting ideas, sometimes putting his own hands to the work to set a misplaced stone or straighten a badly-planted tree, recalling, by his ardor and holy enthusiasm, the grand figures of Esdras and Nehemiah, occupied, by God’s order, with the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem, a tall man, of marked features, seemed to make himself everywhere present. His powerful stature and black cassock

Every hour of the day he thought of the message which the Blessed Virgin had addressed to him; every hour he thought of the miraculous cures which had followed the apparition; he was a daily witness of countless miracles. He had devoted his life to execute the orders of his powerful Queen, and raise to her glory a splendid monument. All idleness, all delay, every moment wasted, seemed to his eyes a token of ingratitude, and his heart, devoured by zeal for the house of God, often broke forth in warnings and admonitions. His faith was perfect, and full of confidence. He had a horror of the wretched narrowness of human prudence, and scouted it with the disdain of one who looks upon all things from that holy mount whereon the Son of God preached the nothingness of earth and the reality of heaven, when he said: “Be not solicitous ... seek first the kingdom of heaven, and all these things shall be added unto you.”

One day, while standing before the miraculous fountain amid a group of ecclesiastics and laymen, the architect offered him a plan for a pretty chapel which he proposed to build above the Grotto. The curé looked at it, and a flush rose to his cheek. With a gesture of impatience he tore the drawing into bits, and tossed it into the Gave.

“What are you doing?” cried the astonished architect.

“Look you,” answered the priest, “I am ashamed of what human meanness would offer to the Mother of my God, and I have treated the wretched plan as it deserved. We do not want a country chapel to commemorate the great events which have taken place here. Go, give us a temple of marble as large and as high as these rocks can sustain—as magnificent as your soul can conceive! Go, and do not check your genius till you have given us a chef-d’œuvre; and understand that, if you were Michael Angelo himself, it would all be unworthy of her who has appeared in this spot.”

“But, monsieur le curé,” observed everybody, “it will cost millions to carry out your ideas!”

“She who has made this barren rock send forth its living stream—she will know how to make faithful hearts generous,” answered the priest. “Go, do what I tell you. Why are you afraid, O ye of little faith?”

The temple rose in the proportions designed by the man of God.

The good pastor, as he watched the progress of the various works, often used to say:

“When will it be granted me to assist, with my priests and people, at the first procession which goes to inaugurate in these hallowed precincts the public worship of the Catholic Church? It seems to me that then I could sing my Nunc dimittis, and die of joy.” His eyes filled with tears at the thought. Never was there a deeper or warmer desire than this innocent wish of a heart given wholly to God.

Sometimes, at hours when the crowd was thin at the Massabielle Rocks, a little girl used to come and kneel before the place of the apparition, and drink of the miraculous spring. She was a poor child, and meanly clad—nothing marked out from the common people about. And if the pilgrims were all strangers to the place, no one suspected that it was Bernadette. This privileged soul had withdrawn into silence and concealment.

III.

In spite of the bishop’s decree, the church in fact had not yet taken possession, by any public ceremony, of this spot, consecrated for ever. It was not till the 4th of April, 1864, that this was done, by the inauguration and blessing of the superb statue of the Blessed Virgin, which was placed with all the pomp customary on such occasions in the rustic niche, bordered with wild flowers, where the Mother of God had appeared to the child of man.[39]

The weather was magnificent. The young spring sun had risen, and advanced in a blue and cloudless sky.

The streets of Lourdes were adorned with flowers, banners, garlands, and triumphal arches. The bells of the parish church, the chapels, and the churches of the neighborhood, rang out joyous peals. Immense numbers of people flocked together to this great festival of earth and heaven. A procession, such as had never been seen by the oldest inhabitant, moved from the church of Lourdes to the Grotto. Troops, in all the splendor of military attire, led the way. Following them were the confraternities of Lourdes, the societies for mutual aid, and other associations, with their banners and crosses; the Congregation of the Children of Mary, whose long robes were white as snow; the Sisters of Nevers, with their long black veil; the Daughters of Charity, with their great white hoods; the Sisters of St. Joseph, in dark mantles; the religious orders of men, the Carmelites, the Brothers of Instruction and of the Christian schools, and prodigious numbers of pilgrims, men and women, young and old—fifty or sixty thousand persons in all—wound along the flowery road leading to the Massabielle rocks. Here and there, choirs and instrumental bands gave a voice to the popular enthusiasm. Last, surrounded by four hundred priests in choir dress, his vicars-general, and the dignitaries of his cathedral chapter, came his lordship, Mgr. Bertrand-Sévère Laurence, Bishop of Tarbes, in his mitre and pontifical robes, with one hand blessing the people, and bearing his crosier in the other.

An indescribable emotion, an exaltation of feeling, such as only Christian people assembled before God can know, filled every heart. The day of solemn triumph had at last come, after so many difficulties, struggles, and disasters. Tears of joy, enthusiasm, and love ran down the cheeks of the people, moved by an impulse from God.

What indescribable joy must have filled the heart of Bernadette on this

Alas! one would have sought in vain among the Children of Mary for Bernadette: among the clergy surrounding the bishop, the Abbé Peyramale would not have been found. There are joys too sweet for earth, which are reserved for heaven. Here below, God refuses them to his dearest children.

At this time of rejoicing, when the bright sun was shining on the triumph of the faithful, the curé of Lourdes, laboring under a disease which was expected to result fatally, was a victim to intense physical sufferings. He was stretched on his bed of pain, at the head of which two religious watched and prayed night and day. He wished to rise to see the grand cortége pass, but his strength failed him, and he had not even a momentary glimpse of its splendor. Through the closed shutters of his room, the joyous sound of the silvery bells came to him only as a funeral knell.

As for Bernadette, God showed her his predilection, as usual with his elect, by giving her the bitter trial of pain. While Mgr. Laurence was going, accompanied by countless numbers of his flock, to take possession of the Massabielle rocks in the name of the church, and to inaugurate solemnly the devotion to the Virgin who had appeared there, Bernadette, like the eminent priest of whom we have just spoken, was prostrated by illness; Providence, perhaps, fearing for this well-beloved child a temptation to vainglory, deprived her of the sight of this unprecedented festivity, where she would have heard her name on the lips of thousands, and extolled from the pulpit by the voice of enthusiastic preachers. Too poor to be taken care of in her own home, where neither she nor her family would ever receive any gift, Bernadette had been carried to the hospital, where she lay upon the humble bed provided by public charity, in the midst of those poor whom the world calls unfortunate, but whom Jesus Christ has blessed in declaring them the possessors of his eternal kingdom.

IV.

Eleven years have now elapsed since the apparitions of the most Holy Virgin. The great church is almost finished; it has only to be roofed, and the holy sacrifice has long since been celebrated at all the altars of the crypt below. Diocesan missionaries of the house of Garaison have been stationed by the bishop near the grotto and the church, to distribute to the pilgrims the apostolic word, the sacraments, and the body of our Lord.

The pilgrimage has taken dimensions perhaps quite without precedent, for before our day these vast movements of popular faith did not have the assistance of the means of transportation invented by modern science. The course of the Pyrenees Railroad, for which a straighter and cheaper route had been previously marked out between Tarbes and Pau, was changed so as to pass through Lourdes, and innumerable travellers continually come from every quarter to invoke the Virgin who has appeared at the Grotto, and to seek at the miraculous fountain the healing of all their ills. They come not only from the different provinces of France, but also

Although Lourdes is a small town, there is a continual passing to and fro upon the road to the grotto, a stream of men, women, priests, and carriages, as in the streets of a large city.

When the pleasant weather comes, and the sun, overcoming the cold of winter, opens in the midst of flowers the gates of spring, the faithful of the neighborhood begin to bestir themselves for the pilgrimage to Massabielle, no longer one by one, but in large parties. From ten, twelve, or fifteen leagues’ distance, these strong mountaineers come on foot in bodies of one or two thousand. They set out in the evening and walk all night by starlight, like the shepherds of Judea, when they went to the crib of Bethlehem to adore the new-born infant God. They descend from high peaks, they traverse deep valleys, they cross foaming torrents, or follow their course, singing the praises of God. And on their way the sleeping herds of cattle or of sheep awake, and diffuse through these desert wilds the melancholy sound of their sonorous bells. At daybreak, they arrive at Lourdes; they spread their banners, and form in procession to go to the Grotto. The men, with their blue caps and great shoes covered with dust from their long night march, rest upon a knotty stick, and usually carry upon their shoulders the provisions for their journey. The women wear a white or red capulet. Some carry the precious burden of a child. And they move on slowly, quiet and recollected, singing the litanies of the Blessed Virgin.

At Massabielle they hear Mass, kneel at the holy table, and drink at the miraculous spring. Then they distribute themselves, in groups according to family or friendship, upon the grass around the Grotto, and spreading out on the sod the provisions they have brought, they sit down upon the green carpet of the fields. And, on the bank of the Gave, in the shade of those hallowed rocks, they realize in their frugal repast those fraternal agapes of which tradition tells us. Then, having received a last blessing and said a parting prayer, they set out with joyful hearts upon their homeward way.

Thus do the people of the Pyrenees visit the Grotto. But the greatest numbers are not from there. From sixty or eighty leagues’ distance come continually immense processions, brought from these great distances upon the rapid wings of steam. They come from Bayonne, from Peyrehorade, from La Teste, from Arcachon, from Bordeaux, and even from Paris. At the request of the faithful, the Southern Railroad has established special trains, trains of pilgrimage, intended exclusively for this great and pious movement of Catholic faith. At the arrival of these trains, the bells of Lourdes ring out their fullest peals. And from these sombre carriages the pilgrims come out and form in procession in the square by the station; young girls dressed in white, married women, widows, children, full-grown men, the old people, and the clergy in their sacred robes. Their banners are flung to the breeze; the crucifix and the

The hand of the Almighty does not weary in shedding all kinds of graces at the spot where his Mother has appeared. Miracles are still frequent. Not long ago Fr. Hermann recovered his sight there.

V.

God has accomplished his work.

He says to the flake of snow, resting hidden upon the lonely peak, “Thou must come from Me to Me. Thou must pass from the inaccessible heights of the mountain to the unfathomable caves of the deep.” And he sends his servant the sun with its brilliant rays to collect and draw along this shining dust, changing it first into limpid pearls. The drops of water run through the snow, they roll down the side of the mountain, they leap over the rocks, they break upon the pebbles, they reunite, they collect in a mass, and run together, now gently, now rapidly, toward the wonderful ocean, that striking image of eternal movement in eternal rest—and thus they reach the valleys where the race of Adam dwells.

“We will stop these drops of water,” says this race of man, as proud now as in the days of Babel.

And they undertake to dam up this weak and quiet stream as it gently crosses their fields. But the stream laughs at their dikes of wood, earth, and pebbles.

“We will stop these drops of water,” the fools repeat in their delirium.

And they heap up enormous rocks; they join them together with impenetrable cement. And notwithstanding, the water does leak through in a thousand places. But the men are numerous—they have a force greater than the armies of Darius. They stop up the thousand fissures, they fill up the cracks, they replace the fallen stones; and at last a time comes when the stream cannot pass by. It has before it a barrier higher than the pyramids, and thicker than the famous walls of Babylon. Beyond this gigantic obstacle, the pebbles of its dry bed are shining in the sun.

Human pride shouts its pæan of triumph.

Meanwhile the water continues to descend from those eternal heights where it has heard the voice of God; and millions of drops, coming one by one, stop before the barrier and rise silently against this granite wall which millions of men have built.

“Look,” say the men, “at the immense power of our race. See this enormous wall. Raise your eyes to its summit; admire its astonishing height. We have for ever conquered this stream which comes from the mountains.”

At this moment, a thin sheet of water passes over the cyclopean barrier. They run up; but the sheet has thickened—it is a river which is now falling, scattering on all sides the upper rocks of the wall.

“What is the matter?” they cry on all sides in the doomed city.

It is the drop of water to which God has spoken, and which proceeds invincibly on its way.

What has your Babel-like wall accomplished?

How humble was this drop of water, this word of a child to which God had said, “Pursue thy course!” How insignificant was this drop of water—this shepherdess burning a candle at the Grotto—this poor woman praying and offering a bouquet to the Blessed Virgin—this old peasant on his knees! And how strong, how apparent, impassable, and invincible was this enormous wall, upon which all the force of a great nation, from the policeman and the gendarme to the prefect and the minister, had labored for eight months!

But the child, the poor woman, the old peasant, have resumed their course. Only now it is not a stray candle or a poor bouquet that testifies to the popular faith; it is a magnificent monument which the faithful are erecting; they are spending millions upon this temple, already celebrated throughout Christendom. Their opposers thought to put down some scattered believers; but now they come in crowds, in immense processions, displaying their banners and singing their hymns. There is a pilgrimage without precedent; whole peoples now come, borne upon their iron roads by chariots of fire and steam. It is not now a little neighborhood which believes—it is Europe; it is the Christian world which is coming from all directions. The drop of water which men tried to stop has become a Niagara.

God has finished his work. And now, as on the seventh day, when he entered into his rest, he has resigned to men the duty of profiting by this work, and the formidable responsibility of developing or compromising it. He has given them a germ of abundant grace, as of other things; the burden remains on them of cultivating and maturing it. They can multiply it a hundredfold by walking humbly and holily in the order of his providence; they can make it unfruitful by refusing to enter into this order. Every good thing from on high is entrusted to human liberty, as the terrestrial paradise was at the outset, on the condition of laboring for and keeping it—“ut operaretur et custodiret illum.” Let us beseech God that men may not reject what he has done for them, and that they may not by earthly ideas or irreligious acts break in their guilty or awkward hands the sacred vessel of divine grace which they have received in trust.

VI.

Most of the persons mentioned in the course of this long history are still alive. The prefect, Baron Massy, Judge Duprat, Mayor Lacadé, and Minister Fould are dead.

Some of them have made several steps in advance on the road to fortune. M. Rouland has left the Ministry of Public Worship (for which he does not seem to have been well fitted), to take care of the Bank of France. M. Dutour, the procureur-imperial, has become counsellor of the court; M. Jacomet is the chief commissary of police in one of the largest cities of the empire.

Bourriette, Croisine Bouhohorts and her son, Mme. Rizan, Henri Busquet, Mlle. Moreau de Sazenay, the widow Crozat, Jules Lacassagne, and all those whose cures we have recorded, are still full of life, and testify by their recovered health and

Dr. Dozous continues to be the most eminent physician of Lourdes. Dr. Vergez is at the spring of Barèges and attests to the visitors at this celebrated resort the miracles which he formerly witnessed. M. Estrade, whose impartial observations we have several times given, is receiver of indirect contributions at Bordeaux. He lives at No. 14 Rue Ducau.

Now, as formerly, Mgr. Laurence is Bishop of Tarbes. Age has not diminished his faculties. He is to-day what we have represented him in this work. He has near the Grotto a house to which he sometimes retires, to meditate in this spot, beloved by the Virgin, on the great duties and the grave responsibilities of a Christian bishop who has received so wonderful a grace in his diocese.[40]

The Abbé Peyramale recovered from the severe illness of which we spoke above. He is still the venerated pastor of this Christian town of Lourdes, where his record is left in ineffaceable characters. Long after he is gone, when he rests under the sod in the midst of the generation which he has formed to the Lord; when the successors of his successors live in his house and occupy the great wooden chair in his church, his memory will be living in the minds of all; and when the “Curé of Lourdes” is mentioned, every one will think of him.

Louise Soubirous, the mother of Bernadette, died on the 8th of December, 1866, the very day of the feast of the Immaculate Conception. In choosing this festival to take the mother from the miseries of the world, she who had said to the child, “I am the Immaculate Conception,” seems to have intended to temper the bitterness of the loss to the heart of her survivors, and to show them as a Certain pledge of hope and of a happy resurrection the sign of her radiant appearance.

While thousands go to the Grotto to contribute to the splendid church, Bernadette’s father has remained a poor miller, subsisting with difficulty by manual labor. Mary, the daughter, who was with Bernadette at the time of the first apparition, has married a good peasant, who has become a miller and works with his father-in-law. The other companion, Jane Abbadie, is a servant at Bordeaux.

VII.

Bernadette is no longer at Lourdes. We have seen how she had, on many occasions, refused gifts freely offered, and repelled the good fortune which was knocking at the door of her humble cottage. She was dreaming of other riches. “We shall know some fine day,” the unbelievers had said at the outset, “what her pay is going to be.” Bernadette had in fact chosen her pay, and put her hand on her reward. She has become a Sister of Charity. She has devoted herself to tend in the hospitals the poor and the sick collected by public benevolence.

After having seen with her own eyes the resplendent face of the thrice holy Mother of God, what could she do but become the compassionate servant of those of whom the Virgin’s Son has said: “As long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me.”

It is among the Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction at Nevers that Bernadette has taken the veil. She is called Sister Marie-Bernard. We have lately seen her in her religious habit at the mother-house of this

God visits her still, not now by bright visions, but by the sacred trial of suffering. She is often ill, and suffers cruelly; but she bears her pains with a sweet and almost playful patience. Sometimes they have thought her dead. “I shall not die just yet,” she would say, smiling.

She never speaks, unless questioned, of the favors which she has received.

She was the Blessed Virgin’s messenger. Now that she has given her message, she has retired into the shade of religious life, wishing to be unnoticed among a number of companions.

It is a trouble to her when the world comes to seek her in the depth of her retreat, and when some circumstance obliges her to appear before it again. She fears the glory of this life. She lives in the humility of the Lord, and is dead to the vanities of the earth. And this book which we have written, and which speaks so much of Bernadette, Sister Marie-Bernard will never read.

THE RIOT OF THE TWELFTH.

The secular press of the city have, as far as we have observed, with scarcely an exception, taken the ground that, however ill-advised might be the Orange procession, it was a right of the Orangemen, and the liberty of the citizen was infringed by the police order prohibiting it. The order was also an act of cowardice, as dictated by fear of a Catholic mob; and hence its revocation by the governor, and his excellency’s resolution to sustain the majesty of the law, and to protect the Orange procession by all the force, if necessary, at his command, was a firm and manly interference in behalf of liberty and law. The sectarian press of city and country see in the police order prohibiting the procession—dictated, it is assumed, by the Catholic clergy—only a proof of the hatred of the Catholic Church to liberty and republican institutions, and in the action of the governor, and the bravery of the military in firing on the crowd, and killing and wounding a large number of citizens, for the most part innocent, except

The view taken by the sectarian press is ridiculous, as well as malicious. The Catholic Church was the victim of the riot, but her only responsibility for it was in warning her children against it, and bidding them to let the procession alone, and not to go near it. If she had been heeded, there would have been no riot, no disturbance. The question was not a Catholic question, and the church had nothing to gain by preventing the procession, still less by a riot to break it up. The pretence that the rights of Protestants are in danger from Catholics in this country, where the Protestants outnumber the Catholics as eight or ten to one, is too absurd to be even a passable joke. Do the sectarian journals count one Catholic more than a match for eight or ten Protestants? That were a greater compliment to us than we deserve. We are afraid the sectarian leaders have bad consciences, which make them cowards. Catholics cannot show the least sign of vitality, or make the slightest move for the practical possession of the equal rights guaranteed them by the constitution and laws, but they take fright, tremble in their shoes, and cry out: “Liberty is in danger!” the Pope is going to suppress American republicanism, strip Protestants of their rights, cut their throats, or reduce them to be “hewers of wood and drawers of water” to—the Jesuits. They are dreadfully alarmed, or affect to be, and create a panic throughout the whole country. But, dear frightened souls, there is no occasion for your alarm, unless you suppose you cannot be free if everybody else is not enslaved. Even if we were the majority of the American people, as we are not, nor likely to be to-day, to-morrow, or the day after, you would be in no danger, for we understand liberty as well as you do, appreciate it more highly, love it better, and have made greater sacrifices for it than you can imagine. Not a few of us have fled hither from the tyranny and oppression of Protestant governments, expatriated ourselves for the sake of liberty, and do you believe us such fools as to destroy it the moment we have found it?

This talk about the hostility of the church to liberty and American republicanism, when not malicious, is sheer nonsense. The acts Protestants allege to prove that the church is hostile to liberty, prove the contrary; for they were acts done against tyrants and despots in defence of liberty, both civil and religious. What were her long struggles against the Franconian and Suabian emperors, but struggles on her part for the freedom of religion, the basis and principle of all true liberty? Why did the popes deny to kings and emperors in the middle ages the right of investiture by the cross and ring, but because to have conceded it would have enslaved the church to Cæsar, and destroyed the independence of religion and the freedom of conscience? Know you not that it was under the fostering care and protection of the church that grew up the freedom and independence of all modern nations? What nation, state, or people has she ever deprived of independence or liberty? If Mayflower, or the settlement of English colonists on the banks of the James. Do, dear friends, read and try to understand a little of history, and dismiss your idle fears, or, if fear you must, fear for the salvation of your own souls hereafter.

The fact is, we are a little impatient when we hear Protestants expressing in grave tones and with a serious face their apprehensions that the spread of Catholicity will tend to the destruction of American liberty. Considering what Protestantism is, and by what means it was introduced and has been sustained, it is too much as if Satan should express serious apprehensions that the spread of the Gospel may tend to the destruction of Christian piety and humility. We find among Protestants men, and not a few, who, when they speak of liberty, mean liberty for all men, for Catholics as well as for non-Catholics; but your true-blue Protestant, who is imbued with the original and genuine spirit of Protestantism, would seem unable to understand by liberty anything but his right to govern, or by religious liberty anything but his right to reject the papacy, abuse the Pope, calumniate and despoil the church, and exterminate or enslave Catholics. Who has not heard of Tyburn, and who went there—of the infamous penal laws against Catholics of England and Ireland, to say nothing of other countries? And were not these same penal laws enacted and enforced in the colony of Virginia, and was it not a capital offence in Massachusetts for a priest to set his foot within the colony, or for an inhabitant to harbor or give him even a meal of victuals? Did not Massachusetts fit out and send from Boston an armed body of men, who shot down Father Rasle, a missionary to the Norridgewock Indians, at the head of his congregation as they came forth from Mass, and massacred them? Did not an American Provincial Congress enumerate among their grave charges against George III. the fact that he had granted freedom of worship to Catholics in the neighboring province of Canada? Was not Guy Fawkes’ Day celebrated in Boston with the usual anti-popery demonstrations down to the epoch of the Revolution, until protested against by some French officers, who came with the army from France to aid us in gaining our national independence? Yet Protestants do not blush to call Protestantism the friend, and Catholicity the enemy, of liberty!

Protestants have very short memories if they have forgotten these things, or else they suppose that Catholics have no memories at all if they suppose that we can permit them to claim, unchallenged, to be and always to have been the party of liberty. It is not, however, the strangest delusion of Protestants, and is only of a piece with their delusion that Protestantism is Christianity and sustained by the Holy Scriptures. But let this pass. We

The Orangemen were required by no duty, civil or religious, to celebrate the battle of the Boyne by a public procession in the streets of our city, nor were they called to do it by any sentiment of patriotism—not of Irish patriotism, for the battle of the Boyne resulted in the subjugation, not the liberation, of Ireland—not American patriotism, for the event was foreign to American nationality. No foreign patriotism has any right on American soil. The event commemorated is wholly foreign to our patriotism. It occurred in a foreign country before our nationality was born, and has no relation whatever to any American sentiment. No precession not in honor of religion or some religious event, and wholly disconnected with American interests or sentiments, has any right on American soil, and can only take place by courtesy or sufferance, indifference or connivance. The prohibition of the Orange procession by the police would have deprived the Orangemen of no right which they had or could pretend to have in this country; and if the procession was designed or even likely to irritate a portion of our citizens, and to provoke a riot, it was not only the right but the duty of the police, as conservators of the peace, to prohibit it, and as far as possible to prevent it.

But the right and the duty of the police do not stop here. There is another side to the question. Every peaceable citizen has the right to walk the streets without being insulted or having his feelings outraged. Processions, banners, songs, tunes offensive, and really intended to be offensive, to any portion of the community, and in commemoration of no American event, in satisfaction of no American sentiment, or in the performance of no civil, military, or religious duty incumbent on American citizens, are never allowable, for the insult and outrage offered to the feelings and sentiments, no matter of what class of the population, is purely wanton, malicious, and wholly unjustifiable. Of this sort is manifestly the insult and outrage offered by Orange processions, banners, songs, and tunes to all of our Irish fellow-citizens not of the Orange party; and these fellow-citizens of Irish birth or extraction, though they have no right to take the law into their own hands, have undoubtedly the right, on American soil, to be protected by the American authorities from insult and outrage to their feelings and sentiments, just as much as persons have the right to be protected from indecent sights in the public streets, or the display of obscene pictures and images in the shop-windows.

But these Orangemen—very few, if any, of whom, we are told, are American citizens—outrage American as well as Irish manhood. Their made in God’s image, not as wild beasts, whom it is a merit to hunt out and shoot down wherever they can be found. They commemorate in their processions, their banners, their songs and tunes, the triumph of treachery, baseness, bigotry, persecution, oppression, murder, rapine, and wholesale massacres, unsurpassed in the history of the most barbarous and heathenish nations.

Never was there a more cruel and bloodthirsty party, one redeemed by fewer virtues or blackened by more or greater crimes, or more deserving the execration of mankind, than that which these Orangemen represent and delight to honor. Is it no insult to us free-born Americans for them to come here and flaunt in our faces their banners stained with the blood of the innocent and the good, branded by the widow’s curse, and wet with the orphan’s tears—symbols of ages of wrong, oppression, and religious intolerance and persecution? Is it here, in free America, they dare come to boast in public of their crimes, and glory in their infamy? Do not we Americans profess to abhor persecution, tyranny, and oppression? Do we not, as a sovereign people, proclaim to the world that we have opened an asylum to the wronged, the oppressed, the downtrodden of every land and of every belief? Where, then, is our manhood when we allow the tyrant, the oppressor, the persecutor, to come here and insult and outrage his victims in the very asylum we profess to have opened to them? What greater insult to all that is noble and manly can be offered Americans than to be even asked to protect those who will not respect even the right of asylum?

No, no; the press has taken only a one-sided view in calling the prohibition of the Orange procession a

His excellency’s revocation of the order of the police prohibiting the Orange procession, and promise to protect the procession by all the force at his command, cannot be defended on the ground that the party opposed threatened violence in case the procession took place, unless it be assumed that the Orangemen had a perfect moral or legal right to march in procession through our streets in their regalia, and with their insulting banners flying and bands playing offensive marches. But they had no such right, as we have seen, and the party making the threats, however wrong the threats were, had the right to be protected from the insult and outrage offered to their feelings by such a display. The vindication of liberty did not require the procession to take place, for liberty is not infringed where no right is violated or abridged; and the assertion of the majesty of the law never requires protection of a wrong because they who would be aggrieved by it have threatened, if permitted, they will attempt by violence to right themselves. Neither American liberty nor law required the Orange procession to be permitted, and if both liberty and law required a mob, when collected, to be dispersed and the violence suppressed, they both also required the protection of American citizens from public insult and outrage. His excellency forgot the duty of protecting American citizens from wrong, and thought only of protecting a foreign and wholly un-American party in committing it.

Yet we have no doubt that the mistaken conduct of the governor—an able man, a good lawyer, and for the most part a worthy chief magistrate of the state—was chiefly prompted by the clamor against Catholics, and the charge brought against his party by its opponents of acting under the dictation of Catholics, who, of course, it is assumed, act always under the dictation of their clergy, and was intended to refute the charge by showing his readiness to protect even Protestant Orangemen, and shoot down their hereditary enemies, though Catholics. The charge, we know, was made against the party now in power in

The clamor against the party on account of its Catholic leaders and supporters means only that the outs are anxious to become the ins. The party out of power in the State would as willingly receive the votes of Catholic citizens as does the party in power, and when in power it did, we believe, more for Catholics than the party now in power has ever yet done, though it, doubtless, promised less. Catholics have never had any reason for giving their votes to the Democratic party but that, in doing so, they followed, very disinterestedly, their honest political convictions.

The pretence of Protestants that Catholics in or out of office act politically under the dictation of their clergy, and in reference to Catholic interests as such, is too notoriously false to mislead anybody. Those prominent politicians, in or out of office, who happen to be Catholics, are the last men in the world to listen to the dictation of the clergy or to act in obedience to the orders of their church, and they take infinite pains to prove that their religion has nothing to do with their politics, in order, we suppose, to escape the suspicion of being influenced in their political conduct by regard for Catholic interests. Their party standing is more to them than their Catholic standing, and they consult rarely the wishes or interests of their church, and usually only the wishes and interests of their party and its leaders. All the offices in the state or nation might be filled by Catholics, the constituencies remaining unchanged, without any more advantage accruing to the church than if they were all filled by Protestants. Catholics and Protestants alike, when in office, consult their constituencies, and act in the way and manner they judge most likely to secure votes to themselves or their party.

The fact is, Catholicity has never placed any man in city, state, or nation in office, and never yet has any man in our country been elected to office because he is Catholic. The Catholics who are in office under the municipal, state, or federal government, in congress, in the state senate, or the assembly, are there not because they are Catholics, but because they are Democrats or Republicans, or because they are of Irish, German, or some other foreign origin, and have or are supposed to have influence in securing the so-called “Irish vote,” the “German vote,” or the “foreign vote”—distinctions which should have no place in American politics—not because they are Catholics, and supposed to be devoted to Catholic interests. There is an “Irish vote,” a “German vote,” a “foreign vote,” but no “Catholic vote,” and, the constituencies remaining

It is, we think, a mistake on the part of our politicians who are Catholics, whether in or out of office, to be so anxious not to be suspected of acting under Catholic influence and in view of Catholic interests. The church asks only what is just, only to be protected in the possession of the equal rights before the state, guaranteed to her by the constitution of the state, and which are not always respected by the popular sentiment of the country. The care which politicians take to show themselves independent in their political action, if Catholics, gains them no credit, and a frank, open, straightforward, and manly course would gain much more respect for themselves and for their religion. Indeed, their sensitiveness and over-caution on this point tend to excite the very suspicion they would guard against, or the suspicion that their conduct is diplomatic, and that they have some ulterior purpose in reserve which they artfully and adroitly conceal. The church is supposed by Protestants to be the very embodiment of craftiness and dissimulation, always and everywhere intriguing to get the control of the secular power, and to wield it in her own interest regardless of all rights and interests of the citizen who happens not to be Catholic. Hence, every Catholic politician is suspected beforehand of craft, intrigue, of crooked and underhand ways, lacking frankness, openness, and straightforward honesty. The only way to repel this false and unjust suspicion is for such Catholics as are politicians to show in an open and manly manner that neither they nor their church have any sinister purpose, and that in being devoted to her interests and acting under influence as good Catholics, they have nothing to conceal, and no ends to gain for her incompatible with their plain duty as American citizens, or which they fear or hesitate to avow in the face of all men. The best way to quell a wild beast is to look him steadily in the eye, and show that you do not fear him.

But to return to the question more immediately before us. If the press and the executive had looked at the subject from the point of view of common sense, as a simple question of right and wrong, without prejudice against Catholics or in favor of Protestants, and without any wish to charge or acquit any party of being under Catholic influence, they could not, it seems to us, have failed to see that liberty was violated in permitting, not in prohibiting, the Orange procession. Party or sectarian prejudices obscured the judgment, and many lives of innocent persons were lost in consequence.

It is contended by some that if a procession of Catholic Irish in honor of St. Patrick is allowed, the Orange procession of the Protestant Irish should also be allowed; either permit both, or prohibit both. The celebration of St. Patrick’s Day as a festival of the Catholic Church, which it is, even by a public procession through our streets, if peaceable and orderly, is a right guaranteed in the freedom of the Catholic religion under our constitution and laws, and so far differs totally from the Orange procession. As a purely Irish national festival, it can be celebrated here only by courtesy, as is St. St. Nicholas’s Day by the Dutch, or St. Andrew’s Day by the Scotch; for no foreign nationality has any right on American soil; otherwise, American nationality would not be independent and supreme on American territory. No foreign national festivals in commemoration or honor of events and interests or sentiments foreign to American nationality and interests and sentiments, can be publicly celebrated here except by indifference, courtesy, sufferance, connivance, national comity, or international treaty.

This rule, however, does not apply to religious festivals and celebrations, whether Catholic or Protestant, because in the eye of the state all religion is catholic, and not national, and, therefore, never a foreigner in any nation. Protestants cannot claim Orange celebrations as a right, though the Orangemen are all good Protestants, because the event celebrated is a foreign political, not a religious event; yet they have the right to institute and celebrate festivals in honor of Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, and other Protestant reformers; for these being the founders of their religion are as such not foreigners. Catholics may also celebrate here any of the festivals of the church in the way and manner she prescribes, because they are religious festivals, and the right to celebrate them is included in the freedom of conscience; so may they celebrate publicly the birthday of the Holy Father, his return to Rome from his exile at Gaëta and Portici, the completion of the twenty-fifth year of his pontificate, or his liberation, when effected, from his present imprisonment, and the recovery for the Holy See of the possessions of which she has been sacrilegiously despoiled—because, as the chief of their religion, he is no foreigner in America.

The German peace celebration, as it was called, but really the celebration of the German conquest and humiliation of France, our ancient ally, was by sufferance, not by right. The Fenian organizations, marches and countermarches, parades and processions in honor of victories not won, are absolutely illegal, and take place only by the connivance—we might say the culpable connivance—of the government, if Great Britain, against whom they are directed, did not herself allow demonstrations on her own soil against foreign sovereigns. The celebrations of Italian unity, since effected by fraud, violence, sacrilege, and robbery, the spoliation of the Holy See, and the imprisonment of the Pope, perhaps should be regarded as the celebrations of the successes of Protestant principles, and therefore, by a right secured in the civil freedom of Protestantism, and if peaceable and orderly, not prohibitable by the police. They may be annoying to Catholics, but so is Protestantism itself; but Protestants have, so far as the secular authorities go, the same right to be Protestants that we have to be Catholics.

We have already shown that it is ridiculous to attempt to hold the church responsible for the riot. The rioters may have been nominal Catholics; but, if so, they were bad Catholics, for they acted contrary to the principles of their church, and the advice and direction of their pastors, and the church cannot be held responsible for acts done contrary to her orders and in violation of her principles. The rioters, themselves, knew and owned that they were disobeying their church, and defended themselves on the ground that the question was a national not a religious question, and, therefore, not within the jurisdiction of the clergy.

But there are Catholics in this city of fifteen or twenty different nationalities, and yet the rioters were exclusively of Irish origin, which is full proof that the riot was not Catholic, but Irish. Had it been a Catholic riot, inspired by the church and for a Catholic object, for which the church could be held responsible, Catholics, irrespective of their nationality, would have been engaged in it, and it would not have been confined to persons of one nationality alone. It was, as everybody knows, an Irish riot, occasioned by an old Irish feud between two Irish parties, not an American or a Catholic riot. These hot-headed, disobedient Irishmen, even if Catholics, could not commit the church to their disorderly and criminal proceedings.

It is only fair to add that this handful of Irish rioters could not any more commit the great body of our Irish fellow-citizens. According to the last census, there were 201,000 souls in this city who were born in Ireland, to say nothing of their children and grandchildren born here. There probably was not over five hundred, if so many, actively engaged in the riot; but double the number, say there were a thousand, and they are quite too few, even if they were of reputable character, which they were not, to commit so large a body as that of our Irish population, most of whom remained quietly engaged in their ordinary avocations. That the Irish furnish their full quota of rowdies, roughs, and disorderly persons in our large towns, nobody denies; but we must remember that there are plenty of the same class not of Irish origin, and there have been riots, and riots of a very grave character, in which the Irish had no hand, though of some of them they were the victims. We have seen more than one American mob in which the chief actors were respectable, well-dressed Protestant American citizens.

There are Irishmen who are wealthy and wear fine clothes that are no credit to their race or their religion, but the Catholic Irish as a body constitute a sober, quiet, peaceable, intelligent, religious, industrious, and thriving portion of our population, and no American-born citizen has any right to say a word in disparagement of them. Indeed, we may say of the Catholic population of the city generally, that it is that portion of the population that it can least afford to spare. Were the city to lose them, it would lose the very population that has contributed, and contributes, the most to its high moral and religious character, to its industry and wealth, and on which its prosperity chiefly depends. With all their faults, and they are many, and many more in the eyes of the Catholic than of the Protestant, they are, as they should be, decidedly the best people going. Their vices are on the surface; their virtues lie deeper,

We think the conduct of the Democratic party towards their Catholic supporters is discreditable. Any party may feel itself honored that secures the votes of the great body of our Catholic citizens, whether naturalized or native-born citizens, and no party will suffer in the end by insisting on justice to Catholics and to Catholic interests. Any party, by frankly and fearlessly sustaining the equal rights of Catholics with Protestants, and maintaining the freedom and independence of religion, will not only serve truly their country, and respond to the demands of American patriotism, but they will best ensure its own permanent prosperity, power, and influence. They who scorn and trample on the church may flourish for a time like the green bay tree, but in the end they will wither and die, and their places be sought, and not found. It is well for every political party to remember that God reigns, and that they who scorn his church, whom he hath purchased with his own blood, will in turn be scorned by the “King of kings, and Lord of lords.”

THE PLACE VENDOME AND LA ROQUETTE.

THE BEGINNING AND THE END OF THE COMMUNE.

FROM LE CORRESPONDANT.

Though the first essays of the Commune were not marked by the nameless horrors that drew upon its end the reprobation of all civilized nations, I have thought it right not to alter my first account. Perhaps some observations may not appear sufficiently severe, and others not wholly justified by the events. I give them to the public as they were

In spite of the mingled emotions of horror and disgust I feel in recalling the men and the deeds I speak of, I may be permitted to manifest two feelings that prevail over all others in the depths of my soul—a redoubling of constant sympathy for the unhappy city of Paris, only rendered dearer by its misfortunes, and an ardent gratitude for the infinite mercy of God, which preserved me, contrary to all human expectation, from the bullets of a herd of assassins more shameless and lower than their predecessors of 1793.

I.

THE PLACE VENDÔME ON THE NIGHT OF THE TWENTY-FIRST OF MARCH.

I passed a great part of Tuesday, the twenty-first of March, in discussing with some political friends the intolerable situation of things at Paris, effected by the triumphal mob of Saturday, the eighteenth. We all deplored and denounced that unjustifiable attempt at the national sovereignty which suddenly drew on us the danger of Prussian occupation of the city and the horrors of civil war—perhaps both of these scourges. Our indignation was profound. One blamed the government for having too readily abandoned Paris to the danger of insurrection; another maintained that by establishing itself at Versailles with the national assembly, and defending the environs of Paris, it saved France. Another declaimed with bitterness, sometimes against the culpable indifference of the national guards, which left everything to be done, and sometimes against the audacity and wickedness of the leaders of the mob that, without any pretext, was dragging France, all bleeding from the wounds incurred in war, into a bottomless abyss. We all felt there was something beneath all this: it was the shameful defection of a part of the troops of the line which had rendered such cruel misfortunes possible. If the army were to countenance the insurrection, that would decide the fate of France—Galliæ finis!

It was easier to deplore the gravity of the evil than to point out a practical means of remedying it. There was great diversity of opinion respecting the latter. Should recourse be had to material force or to a spirit of persuasion and conciliation? The use of material force might inflame the rebellious party still more, and cover Paris with blood and ruins. The success of moral influence was hardly possible with insurgents who began by assassinating Generals Lecomte and Clément Thomas, and deliberately advocated a social revolution.

At three o’clock, a well-known inhabitant of the Place Vendôme, who had already distinguished himself by to recede before no danger or fatigue, and to serve the cause of order at Paris as he had been serving the cause of the national honor in his province. We should not despair of the future prosperity of a country in which there is still a great number of examples of similar devotedness. He did not think of returning to the country till the day after the mayors and deputies of Paris, doubtless unwittingly serving the interests of demagogism much more than the demagogues themselves, thought they were making a conciliatory move by yielding to their wishes, inviting the Parisian electors to illegal elections, disbanding the battalions of the national guard, wholly devoted to the cause of order, and thus destroying the sole material and moral support that still remained to the better portion of Paris. These mayors and deputies, whose imprudence and want of foresight no human tongue could express, declared they had saved everything, and they had lost everything. They ascended to the Capitol as in triumph, and they had led us to the Tarpeian Rock. They pretended to avoid the shedding of blood, and chose the surest means of shedding it in torrents. My friend agreed with me that next to the hideous stand of the battalions of the line that had entered into a pact with the mob, nothing could be more disastrous than the inexplicable compromise entered into by these mayors and deputies. There was not a day on which I did not apply to them the dilemma that I formerly applied to the government of the emperor in the guêt-à-pens of Castelfidardo: “Either dupes or accomplices.”[41]

Vive l’Ordre! Vive la France! Vive l’Assemblée Nationale!” They everywhere meet with cordial sympathy. The battalion that guarded the Bourse presented arms as they passed. The battalions of the faubourgs, that held the Place Vendôme, endeavored in vain to prevent their passing, and the person who from the balcony of the staff wished to address them in order to justify the insurrectionary movement, was interrupted by enthusiastic acclamations in favor of order and the national assembly.

The central committee at the Hôtel de Ville understood so well the bearing of this manifestation that they hastened to take energetic measures to remain masters of the Place Vendôme, and not to allow in it any new manifestations from the friends of order. They sent thither several battalions. Travel was forbidden there and in the neighboring streets; the approaches were rigorously guarded: four pieces of cannon, with cannoneers ready to fire, were set up in the Rue de la Paix and the Rue Castiglione.

At nine o’clock, the wife of one of the employees of the minister of justice came to beg me to carry to her brother the final consolations of religion. I had seen him some days previous, and his end seemed near. It was with the greatest difficulty she had left the Ministère and the Place Vendôme, and she feared it would be impossible for me to return with her. But, unwilling her brother should die without the sacraments of the church, she succeeded by her prayers and tears in reaching me, and was willing to brave everything again in order to enable me to go to him.

I assured her I would unite my efforts to hers, and, though conscious that the ecclesiastical costume had, since the downfall of the empire, been disagreeable to the Parisian revolutionists, I added that we should succeed. I set out that very instant with one of the employees of the church.

The Place and the Boulevard de la Madeleine were quiet and nearly deserted. The Rue Neuve-des-Capucines was livelier. At the entrance of the Place Vendôme, I found myself in presence of the national guards, who did not much resemble those belonging to that quarter. They were very numerous. Their language was in the main rather noisy than threatening. The words “citizen” and “republic” were constantly on their lips. They allowed no one to stop, and showed themselves severely rigid towards the passers-by that wished to contemplate a spectacle so new in this pacific and wealthy quarter.

I had not yet arrived at the angle of the Rue Neuve-des-Capucines and the Place Vendôme, when an outpost of the national guards, arms in hand, cried to me in somewhat rough tone: “Citizen, no one is allowed to stop!” It was the very place and the time to stop to accomplish my holy mission. I explained briefly, consigne has forbidden it.” I asked to see one of the officers, for I saw plainly I should be obliged to parley, but, in view of a duty so grave and urgent, I resolved to use every means. A sergeant presented himself with that important and somewhat ridiculous air which carries the conviction among the lower ranks that public affairs could not be sustained without him. I explained my wish. “You cannot pass.” I mildly insisted. “The consigne has forbidden it, and to-day he is very rigorous.” I asked the reason of this exceptional severity. “It is, you see, citizen, because the bourgeoisie of this quarter have been making a racket to-day, and this must not be repeated.”

This observation, one of the most characteristic I ever heard in my life, was made with a seriousness which would have dispelled mine at another time less distressing to my heart as a priest and a Frenchman.

Convinced that nothing was to be effected with this sergeant, who was more self-sufficient than wicked, I asked to see the captain. He came to me with a dry and lofty air that the mildness of my language and doubtless the sad motive also that led me to the Place Vendôme speedily modified. After refusing me, and listening to renewed entreaties, he gave me permission to enter the Place Vendôme, on condition that I should remain all night. That was the extent of the right allowed him by the consigne. Tired of constantly hearing of a consigne who, according to the graphic avowal of the sergeant, was only influenced by his dissatisfaction at the racket that the bourgeoisie of the quarter had been making that day, I replied that I could not accept the condition, that I was very sorry not to be able to understand a refusal which affected a dying person and a family in affliction, and that I would leave the public to judge this fact, since there was no other authority to appeal to.

These words, uttered with an emotion but little restrained, changed the mind of the captain, who vainly sought plausible pretexts to oppose me. He appeared, besides, to be greatly preoccupied with the command he exercised: others were constantly coming to him for orders, and it was evident from his embarrassed manner that he had been more accustomed to receive than to give orders. He ordered one of the national guards to accompany me to the house of the minister of justice, not to lose sight of me for an instant, and to bring me back to the entrance of the Rue Neuve-des-Capucines. Notwithstanding the pacific character of my costume, I was treated like one of the suspicious bourgeoisie of the quarter, who could not be pardoned for having made a racket during the day. The insurgents had strengthened their position in the Place Vendôme, to prevent henceforth the manifestations of honest people. They appeared resolved to allow it to be entered only with extreme circumspection, and by persons who resided here.

I proceeded, accompanied by my national guardsman, who was armed.

The Place was poorly lighted. We had scarcely left behind us the group of national guards that barricaded the entrance, than he addressed me

Every moment we met armed groups. As far as I could judge, from rapid glances over the Place, some were discussing with vivacity the events of the day: others, like mercenaries, without dignity and without conscience, appeared to have no other care than to smoke and drink. The insurgents I met did not conceal the suprise that the presence of a priest in their midst during the night caused them. Those who thought I had been arrested, and was on my way to the post of the état-major, where I had seen more than one spy or Prussian led during the siege, did not deprive themselves of the pleasure of aiming a joke or an insult at me. Those who thought I was going to fulfil the duties of the holy ministry saluted me with respect. They were far from resembling in their equipments and deportment the national guards of the quarter of St. Roch or the Madeleine, but when I compared them with those I found the next day in the same place, after the criminal and bloody fusillade upon citizens only guilty of calmly expressing their love of order and their devotedness to the national assembly, they were comparatively disciplined and civilized.

The ante-room of the minister of justice’s residence was guarded by insurgents, who allowed no one to enter or go out without particular scrutiny. I quickly made known to the leader the object of my mission. He listened to me with evident curiosity and self-sufficiency, and, after affecting to consider, he motioned me to proceed. The court was occupied by another post that watched the entrance to the offices and hôtel of the minister, and the avenue that led through the gardens to the Rue de Luxembourg. No light was to be seen in the apartments. A profound silence reigned everywhere. No other employee remained at the minister’s than the brother-in-law of the young man to whom I was carrying the last consolations of religion. He received them with more calmness and serenity than might have been expected, humanly speaking, of a young man of twenty-two years of age, when one looks forward to a long life; but what a double grief for a family to find themselves at once in the presence of death and a band of insurgents!

A quarter of an hour after, I left the ministère with my national guard, who treated me with a respect more and more deferential. The lady who had gone to the Rue de la Ville-l’Evêque to find me was also struck with his excellent appearance, and commissioned me to give him a small sum of money. I begged him, as delicately as possible, to accept it in aid of his family, who might be in need for want of employment. He seemed very much touched by this generous attention, and, as much to satisfy my curiosity as to prevent the difficulty of expressing his gratitude at a time when he was officially charged with guarding me,

“From what quarter of Paris are you?”

“I am from Bercy, monsieur l’abbé. They sounded the rappel this evening. I set out with my company. They told us we were appointed to a very important patriotic mission. Arrived at the Place Vendôme, we were ordered to guard it rigorously.”

“But why so rigorous a guard in a quarter where there are only very excellent people, who love order and peace above all things?”

“Ma foi, monsieur l’abbé, I know nothing at all about it. Bercy is perfectly quiet. This quarter is no less so. I do not understand it. They ordered us to come, and we had to obey.”

“But did you not at Bercy have confidence in M. Thiers as well as we? Do you prefer Assi, Flourens, Blanqui, and Felix Pyat to him?”

“Our employers have always spoken very highly of him. The good workmen call him a great patriot, and not a mere pretender like so many others. He promised us liberty and work, and would certainly have kept his word. So we have committed a great piece of foolishness in allowing him to go to Versailles. God grant it may not be for a long time!”

“But what becomes of your work all this time? Do you think this state of thing favorable to the interests of the workman?”

“Ah, monsieur l’abbé, work is a thing but little thought of now, and yet the longer we delay resuming it, the more unfortunate we are. There are among us so many sluggards and madcaps!...”

My excellent guard was explaining to me in his own way how the bad workmen, who wished in 1848 to obtain the right to labor, had, since the siege of Paris, wished to retain the right of doing nothing, when I found myself at the spot whence we had set out. Immediately resuming his most official and patronizing air—“Citizen,” said he to the patrol that guarded the entrance to the Place Vendôme, “let this citizen pass!”

I had promised the family of the poor sick man to visit him again in two or three days. Complicated as the situation of Paris was, and in particular that of the Place Vendôme, treated and occupied as a place taken by storm, in defiance of all right and all decency, by the national guards of the faubourgs in revolt against the laws, I was far from anticipating that I should hasten the next day to the same place in the midst of all the horrors of civil war, to carry the consolations of religion to the honorable inhabitants of Paris, smitten down without any provocation, without any motive, by the bullets of their fellow-citizens.

II.

THE PLACE VENDÔME ON WEDNESDAY, THE TWENTY-SECOND OF MARCH.

The next day, the twenty-second of March—henceforth one of the saddest dates in the history of Paris—I was on duty at the church of the Madeleine—that is to say, appointed to receive, from six o’clock in the morning till ten at night, those persons who sought the religious or charitable ministry of the priest, and to afford them all the satisfaction within the limits of possibility.

As the pacific manifestations on the eve had produced a favorable moral effect, it was proposed to renew them during the day, as I learned from some of my friends, known to be devoted to the cause of liberty years previously. Paris is rather the theatre than the author of the revolutions that take place there.

Revolutionists and rioters belong to all parts of France and Europe, and in disastrous times they hasten to Paris, hoping to catch fish in the troubled waters.

I have studied all the large cities of Europe from a political and social point of view. For reasons too extended to be enumerated here, not one is like Paris, the rendezvous of all suspicious and corrupt characters—of the unfortunate who are at variance with the laws of their own country, and of men of no class who are ready to become revolutionary agents—and these are the worst of all. After the siege it had endured, the state of agitation and prostration resulting from so great a struggle, so much suffering, and so many deceptions, could not fail to attract the leading charlatans and rogues of all parts of Europe. It is not to the honor of the popular class at Paris, the most frivolous and the most credulous in the world, that these new-comers met with a success beyond their expectations, for they became in a moment our masters. Thanks to this cosmopolitan invasion, and also to the departure of too large a number of genuine Parisians who feared the Prussian bombardment less than the mob of international agents, Paris, the brilliant centre of elegance, art, and of intellect, as well as a financial and political centre, became, according to the expressive comparison of the Times, an infernal caldron, which terrified all Europe, and in which mingled and seethed all human passions.

The party that was playing its part at Paris was not Parisian or French, but exclusively social. It was a flock of birds of prey, a herd of roaming wild beasts, who had hastened from

At half-past two, some persons, filled with terror and indignation, entered the Madeleine to inform me of a sinister catastrophe. The agents of the pacific manifestation, who had proposed on the eve to traverse the principal streets of the city, crying, Vive la République! Vive l’Ordre! Vive l’Assemblée Nationale! had become the victims of a horrible ambuscade. After passing through the Rue de la Paix, a large number of respected citizens of Paris, unarmed, and influenced only by the patriotic desire of securing, by the most inoffensive means and for the benefit of all good citizens, the triumph of equity, law, and a spirit of conciliation, had been met at the entrance of the Place Vendôme by a murderous fusillade from the insurgent national guards. The reports of the number of the killed and wounded varied, but it must have been considerable.

At the same time, I saw from the outer colonnade of the Madeleine the shops hastily shut up and people fleeing in disorder from the direction of the Place Vendôme. Every face expressed wrath and consternation. Some national guards of the eighth arrondissement hastened to rally around the church to watch over the public security.

I made inquiries about the condition of the wounded, and was told they were being carried home, and that several belonged to the parish of the Madeleine, which includes the Rue de la Paix and the Place Vendôme. As I did not know the address of the victims, and knew from an experience of ten years that the members of the parish had the Christian habit of summoning the priest to the aid of the dying, I waited with emotion for them to have recourse to my ministry.

At four o’clock no one had come, and I was ignorant of the name and address of any of the wounded. At half-past four there was a report that some of the killed and wounded remained on the Place Vendôme, and that there were detained there some of those engaged in the pacific manifestation, among others, the father of a young man from the Rue Tronchet, whose skull had been fractured by a ball, and whom the insurgents refused to deliver up. Other details were added of such a revolting character that I could scarcely credit them. I ordered the Madeleine to be closed—took with me all that was necessary for the administration of the sacraments, and went by way of the boulevards towards the Place Vendôme, resolved, as on the preceding night, to recede before no obstacle to my reaching the victims who might need religious aid. The Boulevard de la Madeleine, generally so lively and brilliant, was almost deserted. The inhabitants were inquiring in a low tone, and in terror, about the incidents of the bloody drama that had just taken place in the neighborhood. Some soldiers only, who had joined the insurgents four days previously, were passing along with a careless and almost satisfied air. If these unhappy men were aware of the frightful event that then preoccupied all Paris,

At the entrance of the Rue Neuve-des-Capucines, which leads from the Boulevard de la Madeleine to the Place Vendôme, I was stopped by a group of people, who from a distance were regarding with mingled sentiments of curiosity and terror the patrols of the mob scattered along the street. “Do not go any further, monsieur l’abbé,” cried several persons to me in trembling voices, more charitable than brave. “If you go among those wretches, you are lost! We have seen them fire upon inoffensive men who were bearing away the wounded at the entrance of the Rue de la Paix.” I made no reply to what was dictated more by fear than reason, and came to the first patrol stationed before the Crédit Foncier. All the houses of the Rue Neuve-des-Capucines were closed, and this street, one of the liveliest of the quarter, seemed like a tomb. The head patrol, a jolly young fellow, with a face as red as blood, advanced towards me, and, solemnly raising his sabre to attest his authority, which I had no intention of disputing, ordered me to stop. I explained to him, without concealing my sadness, the object of my mission: “I am going as a priest belonging to the parish of the Madeleine to see the wounded on the Place Vendôme.” He immediately motioned with his sabre for me to pass; this was his only reply. Was he aware of the effect of this sinister beginning of civil war upon the condition of Paris? I doubt it—to parade and appear important seemed to be his principal care. The other national guards, vigilant and with their hands on their loaded arms, resembled sentinels in face of the enemy, without their discipline and proper carriage.

The second patrol, stationed in the middle of the street, allowed me to pass without objection. It was composed, like the first, of national guards of all ages, but not of all conditions: they were from the most uncivilized class of the faubourgs. Their accoutrements were not uniform or neat. Some appeared quite satisfied; they were the youngest; others had a less blustering manner; but all felt an instinctive joy to rule over the most brilliant part of Paris, and inspire the citizens with a lively terror.

Before I came to the third patrol, placed at the opposite end of the street, I noticed on the pavement many stains of blood. It was in fact only a few steps distant that, only a short time before, the victims of the fusillade fell. I will not attempt to describe the anguish that filled my soul at the sight of this blood of my countrymen, shed by insurgents without country and without God. In the midst of my great distress I recalled the sublime cry of Monseigneur Affre: “Let my blood be the last shed!” I ardently prayed in my turn that the blood of these innocent and peaceful victims might be the last poured out, but it was to be feared that the revolutionary and social crisis, that weighed on Paris like a horrible nightmare, would only end, as it had commenced, by a terrible effusion of blood.

There was no difference between this patrol and the preceding, except that it was more actively vigilant. The chief of the national guards that formed it, and who seemed surprised to behold me, having asked where I was going, and what I was going to do, sent two men to conduct me to the post that guarded the entrance to the Place Vendôme. During the siege of Paris, I one day passed along the formidable defences of the Point-du-Jour at Auteuil. The consigne

I experienced an undefinable impression in the Place Vendôme, produced by a twofold contrast, the remembrance of which will not be effaced to the latest moment of my life.

This Place, with which Louis XIV. adorned Paris, was first called the Place des Conquêtes, to recall the brilliant victories which had secured to France the fine provinces which we have just lost a large part of, after most lamentable reverses. The sumptuous edifices, built according to Mansard’s plans, which form the contour, render it in an architectural point of view the finest Place in Europe. Destined by Louis XIV. to bring together the royal library and imprimerie, the academies, the mint, and the hôtel of foreign ambassadors; now inhabited by wealthy families, rich travellers, and some of the government officials; situated between the garden of the Tuileries and the Boulevards des Capucines and des Italiens; entered at its two extremities by the Rues de Castiglione and de la Paix, through which pour wealthy merchants and elegant promenaders, it became on the twenty-second of March the theatre of uproar and civil war: it was covered with blood, and occupied by an armed crowd, in which prevailed the most sinister faces from the worst quarters of Paris.

The national guards of Bercy that I had seen the night before were models of civilization and distinction compared with these. Some were rather boys than men. They appeared to be only sixteen or seventeen years of age. As proud as they were surprised to carry a gun, they only sought for an opportunity or a pretext to use it. Those who have witnessed the revolutions of Paris know that armed children are capable of atrocious misdeeds. Sprung from the lowest grades of society, destitute of all moral sense, they care but little what cause they have to defend or what enemy to attack: their highest ambition is to display their audacity and to fire off their guns. As I am only relating the things I witnessed myself, I shall not speak of the fiendish part taken, according to some spectators, by a boy in the fusillade which had just shot down too great a number of pacific and honorable citizens. Many of the insurgents were in a state of overexcitement, proceeding less from their political and social opinions than from a too copious absorption of wine and other liquors: this is on days of revolutionary storms another category of insurgents capable of

In this nameless multitude might also be remarked men of fifty or sixty years, whose ferocious and degraded faces excited the worst suspicions respecting their moral instincts and their previous relations with the legal authorities. I at once saw that many of them were foreigners, particularly Italians and Poles. What a contrast between such insurgents, hardly to be found in June, 1848, in the lowest parts of Paris, and the imposing architectural splendor of one of the finest squares in the world! I could not express the effect of this mingling of poetic beauty and foul deformity upon me.

Another contrast no less sad rent my heart. The side of the Place Vendôme toward the Rue de la Paix was sprinkled with blood; now and then the wounded and dead were carried by; and over these spots of human blood, by the side of these unfortunate victims of civil war, a great number of insurgents, perhaps the very ones who without any motive or provocation had shot them down, were laughing, eating, drinking, and amusing themselves, as if they were celebrating the happiest event of their lives.

In going to the Ministère de la Justice, I had to pass through several groups of varied physiognomy. They were generally astonished to see the ecclesiastical garb among them. I acknowledge that, if I had not had a mission of sacerdotal obligation to accomplish, I should hardly have procured them this surprise, notwithstanding my natural love of observation. Some—a small number, however—received me with coarse insults and horrid laughter. A few steps from the Ministère de la Justice, a national guardsman, who was talking and gesticulating with uncommon vivacity, stopped to address me, while shaking his fist at me, this singular apostrophe: “When shall we be delivered from those wretches?” I will not relate other pleasantries of this nature of which I was the butt: this one is only too much. Their authors had doubtless learned to know and judge the clergy by the violent diatribes of citizens Blanqui and Félix Pyat.

Others, on the contrary, saluted me with a respect and cordiality which I was careful to return politely. They were honest workmen who had doubtless had intercourse with their parish priests, or whose children attended the catechism classes or the schools of the religious congregations, and received a benefit which they understood how to appreciate. There were strange contrasts in this mixture. Not to forget a single characteristic detail, I caught some observations that denoted on the part of their authors serious regrets for the dreadful catastrophe which terrified the whole city.

If, among the insurgent battalions chosen to fire on the inoffensive inhabitants of Paris, there were some to deplore the horrors of civil war, how many might not have been found in the other battalions! If the ringleaders could be separated from those whom they lead, and the deceivers from the deceived, the number of the latter would be considerable, and the former somewhat modified. One of the most serious faults of the workman of Paris is the incredible facility with which he enters into all the hollow schemes of

My guide, or rather my guard, appeared insensible to the insults as well as to the salutations I received on the way. Arms in hand, always impassible and solemn, it was only now and then he cast toward me an inquisitorial glance, as if to assert his authority and my dependence.

I made known the object of my mission to the leader of the post at the Ministère de la Justice. He was a young and well-bred officer. He listened to me with attention, and replied, after saluting me twice with a politeness full of respect, that I was at liberty to do all I wished.

I found the sick person I had seen the evening before in the hôtel of the minister of justice, exhausted by excitement that was hastening his end. He could see from his sick-bed all that occurred on the Place. In one corner of the apartment his sister, endowed with the higher Christian virtues, and an aged lady whom I did not know, but who was probably their mother, were weeping over the public as well as their own private woes. I had promised the sick person the night before to visit him again in three or four days, but as I could not enter the Place Vendôme without indicating the precise place I wished to go to, and could not have a better means of ascertaining where the victims of the fusillade had been transported, I briefly explained the reason of my unexpected call and gave him some religious encouragement, which was to be the last. I learned that the dead and wounded removed from the Place had been carried to one of the neighboring houses occupied by the administration and the ambulance of the Crédit Mobilier. I hurried thither.

The Ministère de la Justice was as silent and deserted as on the preceding night. Four sentinels were posted between the court and garden; a fifth at the door of the hôtel had the air of guarding most conscientiously an absent excellency.

In going out, I sought with a discreet glance for my solemn guard, to become anew his prisoner. The officer who had received me a few moments before informed me he had sent him back to his post. From that moment I could go where I pleased.

At the Crédit Mobilier I met two bodies that were being carried to their relatives. I was told that one was M. Molinet, one of the most pious and exemplary young men of the parish. He had been shot down by the side of his father, who, notwithstanding his inexpressible grief, had been torn from the body of his only son and carried as a prisoner to the staff-officer of the Place. After offering up a prayer for these two unfortunate victims, I inquired for the apartment to which the wounded had been carried.

The consternation and terror that reigned among the inhabitants of the Place Vendôme may be imagined from the sinister events that had occurred before their eyes, and the dangers of all kinds with which they were threatened. Stupor was depicted on the faces of the concierges of the Crédit Mobilier. These good people were hardly willing to half-open the door of their lodge, and muttered something vague which was not an answer to my question. At last they sent with me to the salle of the wounded a charming child of eight or ten years of age. He examined with more curiosity than fear the strange features of the citizens of Montmartre and Belleville who occupied the vestibule.

cantinière of somewhat free manners also manifested an equal desire to aid them. The insurgents that frequented the rooms behaved with propriety; they spoke in low tones, and instead of the care which they were not fitted to bestow, the most of them manifested a sympathy mingled with curiosity. Beyond this, their faces displayed no emotion; my presence did not astonish them; they discreetly retired when I approached the sufferers. No one appeared to me mortally wounded. Nevertheless, I administered religious aid to one of them at his own request, and confined myself to giving the rest as much encouragement as possible, for which they earnestly thanked me. They all belonged to the bourgeoisie. The last to arrive lived in the Rue Meyerbeer, and did not appear to be more than thirty years old. He told me he was to have set out that very evening to join his wife and children in the country, but wished before leaving to perform the part of a good citizen by joining in the manifestation. He had been wounded three times, but not dangerously.

At the entrance of the room a young man seized with frightful convulsions had been laid down on the parquet. He was partly dressed as a soldier of the line, and partly as a national guardsman. He was doubtless one of the too numerous soldiers who had united with the insurgents, and been drawn into serving their sad cause. The fusillade from the ranks of his new colleagues, and the numerous victims they had just shot down, must have caused a violent fit of remorse. He was not wounded, but only had a sudden nervous attack, that affected him in a manner painful to behold. He did not appear to understand anything, and was suffering from contractions and contorsions of a truly frightful character. I approached him—tried to calm him with some kind words, and then recommended him aloud to the care of the two infirmarians of the International society. The national guards who surrounded him appeared touched to see manifested for one of their number an interest equal to that I had just shown for the victims of devotedness to the cause of law and order.

Before leaving the Place Vendôme I wished to ascertain if any of the victims had been taken to the ambulance of M. Constant Say. This was one of the six ambulances I was appointed to visit during the siege, to administer religious aid and awaken the moral sense of the soldiers who were sick or wounded. This ambulance was kept in perfect order. More than once, in observing the meals of the wounded, I envied them the healthful and abundant nourishment served up to them during the interminable months of December and January. They were treated as real members of the family, and were truly the spoiled children of the house. They were daily visited by one of the most celebrated physicians of Paris, who lavished on them the most intelligent care, and by the minister of Jesus Christ, who no less kindly spoke to them of God, their souls, their absent mothers, and of their temporal and eternal welfare. It could not be otherwise in a family whose extensive industrial establishment and inexhaustible charity are such a benefit to the laboring classes of Paris. I had the consolation of seeing all the soldiers who were taken

As to the rest, during the entire siege, the solicitude of the Parisians for the sick and wounded soldiers was truly admirable, and the praise I am bound in justice to accord to the ambulance of M. Constant Say, may be equally given to the rest I was appointed to visit: the ambulances of M. Frottin, formerly mayor of the first arrondissement, in the Rue St. Honoré; that of M. Jourdain, a member of the Institute, in the Rue du Luxembourg; of Dr. Moissenet, a physician of the Hôtel Dieu, in the Rue Richepanse; of Madame Dognin, of the Point-du-Jour at Auteuil; and, finally, the ambulance bravely founded and directed at Grenelle by some laboring women of ardent faith, and a devotedness that works wonders, and transferred after the bombardment of Grenelle to the magnificent hôtel of M. le Comte Mercy d’Argenteau on the Rue de Suresne.

I was also aware that there were still some wounded soldiers in M. Say’s ambulance. The brutal invasion of the Place Vendôme had prevented me from visiting them the two days previous. To go there, I was obliged to cross the entire Place. It seemed more like a field of battle than a Place. Here were stacks of arms, there were caissons full of supplies, further on were delegates of the central committee of the Hôtel de Ville, who where transmitting orders with feverish haste, and everywhere were the insurgents who had just fired, and who were ready to take fresh aim.

I had no longer an armed guard to accompany me. During my walk, which I frankly acknowledge would have seemed much shorter on ordinary occasions, I was again an object of insult and sarcasms not highly seasoned with wit from some, of respect and sympathy from others, and of astonishment or indifference from the greatest part. I had never seen so great a number of persons eating and drinking. Their appetite only gave out after complete exhaustion of the means of gratifying it. It is true that, to the demoralized workmen who abound in Paris, the word riot signifies the time for good eating, and still better drinking, and no work at all.

Against the railing that surrounds the column were squatting several national guardsmen, to whom a cantinière dealt out liquor. The oldest was certainly not eighteen. At my approach one of them, who had doubtless been a chorister in some church, instinctively made a respectful bow. A second, who made some pretensions to delicate wit, pointed at me with his sabre, uttering a laugh more stupid than malicious. A third, and this became more serious, loaded, or pretended to load, his musket, which he pointed at me. At the same time the cantinière encouraged him with atrocious words, that no delicate ear would pardon me for relating. I had had for seven months so many occasions to recommend my soul to God, that I thought it opportune to do so once more. Nevertheless, not to take things too seriously, I recalled the amusing reply made me by an excellent man, from the neighborhood of St. Sulpice, who was obliged, after the three first days of bombardment on the left side by the Prussians, to seek refuge in the vicinity of the Madeleine. When I approved of his prudent decision, he replied, “In fact, I could not reasonably pass every night in recommending my soul to God!”

I arrived at my ambulance without any harm but a momentary fright. None of the victims of the

My sacerdotal mission was ended. In returning across the Place Vendôme, I was not the witness or the object of any occurrence that merits attention. The dense line of insurgents that guarded the entrance of the Place from the Rue de la Paix opened for me to pass. The patrol, who remembered having allowed me to enter, asked no questions in permitting me to go out. I met a man in the Rue Neuve-des-Capucines who was covering a real pool of blood with sand. There was no change in the manner of the patrols: the street was still like a tomb. Nearly in front of the Crédit Foncier, a shop-keeper of respectable appearance timidly opened one of the doors of his shop, and asked permission to pass from the last patrol toward the boulevard, which was not more than fifty yards from me. He appeared so alarmed, and his face was so extremely pale, that the patrol, proud of the fear he inspired, did not fail to avail himself of so favorable an opportunity of amusing himself at the other’s expense. He questioned him with an affected solemnity which would have excited my laughter in less tragical times, addressed him a long and severe recommendation, and when the man turned, more dead than alive, toward the boulevard, the youngest of the band, who hid the malicious hilarity of a gamin under the gravity of a judge, took his gun, and pointing it toward the shop-keeper, who happily was not aware of such a salute, had the air of saying: “If the rest of the bourgeoisie resemble this one, Paris is certainly ours.”