Volume 21 — CHAPTER IV. WE ALL MEET TO PART. (continued 3)

After the Mass was over, and the last peal of the organ had died away, and the patter of the last footstep been lost in the distance, as it still wanted a considerable time to my breakfast hour, I strolled round the great empty church. There seemed to be nothing of value in it. If it had ever possessed any of the treasures of art, they had probably perished or been carried away during the long wars that devastated the country after the period of the Reformation, for I found nothing worthy of notice. I had just concluded to leave the church when my eye was arrested by what I took to be an accident which had happened to the crucifix on one of the side altars. At first I supposed that it had received a blow which had nearly broken off the right arm of the figure. On looking more closely I perceived that it was evidently of great age, and the arm I supposed to be broken stood out from the cross at a considerable angle, and hung about half way down the side, the nail by which it had once been attached still remaining in the hand.

Whilst I was still wondering as to the nature of the accident which had befallen the quaintly-carved crucifix a quiet and pleasant voice roused me from my revery.

“I see, sir, that you are examining our curious old crucifix!”

Turning round I recognized the old priest who had sung Mass, and encouraged by his amiable manner and address, I stated the matter I had been pondering over, and asked for an explanation.

“There has been no accident,” said he; “the distortion which you notice in the right arm has existed far beyond the memory of man.

“The figure is carved out of some very hard wood, and all out of a single block—there being no joining in any part of it.”

Still more astonished, I asked what could have been the motive of representing the Saviour in so strange an attitude; the more, as the hole for the nail still remaining in the hand was still to be seen plainly in the wood, whilst the hand was in the position in which it would have been had it just struck a blow.

“That is a curious story, and is, in fact, the only legend I know of connected with this church.

“The crucifix is held in great reverence, and people come from great distances to pray before it. As I see you are a stranger, perhaps you will partake of an old man’s breakfast, whilst you listen to him as he relates the traditional story, which being connected with this church, where he has grown old, he regards as almost peculiarly his own. Besides, the story is too long to be listened to either standing or fasting.”

Thanking the good priest for his kind offer, I followed him into the little presbytery almost adjoining the church, where we were soon seated on each side of a little table taking off the edge of our appetites with eggs, coffee, and rolls.

When we had somewhat appeased our craving, the good man commenced, saying:

“The tradition of which I have to speak dates back a long way, and has at least so much of authenticity about it as attaches to the undoubted antiquity of the crucifix itself, and to the fact that, for many generations at least, no other account has been current.

“My grandfather used to tell it to me when an infant on his knee, and said that he had heard it from his grandfather in the same way.

“In which of the many wars which have scourged this unfortunate land since the rebel monk Luther brought the curse of religious dissension upon it, the circumstances which I am about to relate occurred, I am unable to determine; for the traditions, which agree in all other points, differ on this.

“On the whole I incline to the one which places these events during the period of Gustavus Adolphus’ invasion, and attribute them to the particular band which was led by his lieutenant Oxenstiern, who certainly did sack the place. This would place it at more than two hundred years ago, and it certainly is not more recent.

“At that period there lived in A——k a widow and her daughter. They were very poor, belonging to the peasant class, and supported themselves in winter by spinning; and when the spring came round, they would go off to the steep mountain-sides, where they helped to dress the vines or gather the vintage, according to the season.

“They never went to distant vineyards, because the mother, having in her youth met with a severe accident, was unable, from its effects, to walk far. There was also another reason: for Gretchen, who was the prettiest girl for many miles around, was also the best, and never failed, winter or summer, to hear Mass and to spend some time in prayer before that very crucifix which has attracted your attention.

“There was, no doubt, some older tradition about its origin, for it had a great reputation for sanctity even then; this tradition, whatever it may have been, seems, however, to have been swallowed up by the overwhelming interest of the subsequent event, which I am about to relate.

“All accounts agree that when Gretchen first worshipped there the crucifix had nothing unusual about it to distinguish it from any other, except its artistic merit.

“The hand was then nailed to the cross. There, however, kneeling in front of it, wrapped in prayer, this young girl spent all the time she could spare from the humble duties of her life.

“She milked the cow, the one valuable possession of her mother, who had the right of common; she washed the clothes, cooked and did the work about her mother’s house, and acted as her crutch as she climbed the steep paths of the vineyard—for, in spite of her lameness, she was a skilful vinedresser—in short, she was all in all to her only parent.

“With all this labor and care Gretchen grew in grace and beauty; and though so devout, she was as bright and cheerful and winning in her ways as the most worldly of her young companions.

“Never, however, could she be tempted to go to any of the merry-makings or harvest-homes or vintage feasts that were held at a distance; her invariable answer was, ‘My mother cannot walk so far.’

“She had many suitors; and admirers came from a great distance.

“To all Gretchen was equally kind and considerate; but to none did she show any sort of preference, so that all the youths for many miles on both sides of the Rhine were pulling caps for her.

“Thus things went on till she was nineteen, when, to the great surprise of all, she was seen to take up with and give a decided preference to the attentions of a young stranger who had been in the place only a few weeks.

“The favored youth was a journeyman clockmaker from Nuremberg, who was going through his year of wandering, and was at the moment settled in the town, working for the only tradesman in his line of business in the place.

“A——k was then much more populous, as you may well suppose, being able to support such a trade.

“This youth, whose name was Gotliebe Hunning, was handsome and showy, wearing his hair in long locks down his back, and spending much of his earnings in dress. He sung, played the guitar, and was reputed wild, though no harm could be alleged against him.

“The old folks shook their heads, and deplored that so sweet and modest a girl as Gretchen should be seen so much with a roisterer like Gotliebe.

“Somehow it had been no sin to sing and be gay like God’s unreasoning creatures before the sour times of Calvin, Huss, and Luther; but though their errors had not penetrated here to any great extent, something of their acid had been imparted to the leaven of life.

“So things were, however, and all the time that Gretchen gave to pleasure—which was little enough, poor child, for they were very poor and her mother was very helpless—she spent with this handsome, clever youth; not that she abandoned her devotion, or was less frequently prostrated before the crucifix; for indeed, if possible, she was found there more than ever. Still, the gossips shook their heads and remarked upon it.

“One would say, ‘Ah! I never trusted that meek manner of hers. I always knew she would surprise us some day, and here it is! It is always so with the very good ones!’ ‘Ay, ay,’ her neighbor would say, ‘cat will after cream! And Eve has left her mark upon the best of them! The girl is a girl like other young things; but I did hope better things of Gretchen, so well brought up as she has been!’—thus they ran on.

“Soon, however, it began to be said that Gotliebe was sobering down; he frequented the tavern less, never danced except with Gretchen, sang less and worked more.

“He was admitted to be a master of his craft, and when it became known that he was engaged in all his leisure hours in making a great clock—the very one the chimes of which you were admiring—for the church, there was less head-shaking, and more talk about Gretchen’s luck in making so great a catch. Still he made no change in his showy dress, and indeed I think that genius, at least in art, often shows itself in that way, and tradition testifies that he was no mean proficient in the art he practised, of which indeed we still have proof every hour.

“Then it began to be observed that Gotliebe was frequently in the church with Gretchen, and had become a regular attendant at Mass. Still, things went on in the same way and no betrothal was spoken of, until, after the war had again broken out and seemed to be drifting this way, it suddenly became known that Gretchen had consented to be married to Gotliebe without loss of time, and that he was to take a house and her mother was to move into it.

“In this remote place, far from any of the great avenues of trade—for vessels usually passed it by, no great roads branching off here, and there being no steamboats invented—news came doubtfully and seldom, and war was at the very door at a moment when only distant rumors had reached A——k.

“However, to return to Gretchen and Gotliebe: You may be sure that what goes on now went on then, and that all the busybodies were agog as to what they were to live upon; how she was to be dressed, and who were to be the bridemaids; but as the world spins round in spite of the flies that buzz about it, so they went their way regardless of all that was said about them.

“In the meantime, the rumors grew more frequent and more particular concerning the cloud of war which was every day drifting nearer and nearer, until the dark mass seemed ready at any moment to burst upon the unfortunate village itself.

“Indeed, news came from neighboring towns and villages that they had been taken and burned by the heretic Swedes, and tales, no doubt often exaggerated, of the violent and dissolute conduct of Oxenstiern’s troopers, kept every one in terror.

“Affairs were in this threatening condition when the wedding-morning came; and, as the story was, though Gretchen had little to spend on dress, no art and no expense could have produced a lovelier bride than stood before the altar of the Crucifix that morning. She wore nothing but a simple dress of white, and a wreath of apple-blossoms, for the trees were just then in flower.

“The wedding-bells were ringing, and the humble bridal-party had just reached the house which Gotliebe had taken, when cannon were heard, and a band of fierce Swedish soldiers rushed into the village.

“The firing proceeded from an attack upon the castle, which still stands at about a mile from this place, and the invaders of the village were army followers and a few of the more dissolute of Oxenstiern’s soldiery, who, encountering the bridal-party, at once interrupted its progress, treating the bridemaids rudely; and one of them, who threw his arms around Gretchen, was immediately struck down by Gotliebe, who, as before said, was a spirited youth.

“One of the invaders, without a moment’s hesitation, struck him lifeless, and attempted to seize the bride, who, with a shriek, fled and took refuge in the church.

“Thither Gretchen was pursued by the band; and when after many hours the troops were withdrawn, and the priest, with a few of the boldest of his flock, ventured into the sacred edifice, they found the high altar desecrated, the sacred vessels gone, and other sacrileges committed, which filled them with horror; but on turning to the altar of the Crucifix, they found the bride prostrate before it, either in a trance or ecstasy, with the soldier who had pursued her lying with his skull broken, and his iron head-piece smashed in as though a sledge-hammer had struck it, and the arm of the crucifix distorted as you see it now.

“On being questioned, the young widow could only say: ‘God has protected me!’

“The poor mother only lingered a day or two afterwards, and was borne to the grave at the same time as the unfortunate Gotliebe.

“Gretchen never knew, or would not say, more than I have repeated of what had occurred at the altar of the Crucifix. It was unplundered!

“The people, however, all said that God, who had borne the insults and profanation directed against himself at the high altar, had interposed when the virtue of a pure virgin was threatened, and had himself, by the hand of his image, smitten the would-be violator dead, leaving the distorted arm as an admonition for ever.”

We were both silent after this recital, and for some moments toyed with the fragments of our breakfast.

At length, raising my head, I asked: “And you, father—do you believe this tale?”

A sweet, soft smile hovered about his lips, as he replied: “Nothing in which the goodness of God is instanced is hard for me to believe! He is less ready to show his anger, so that, though we live in the midst of his wonders, we have got so used to them that it is said that there are those who deny his existence.”

This was said as if to himself. Then, speaking more collectedly, he continued:

“You English would rather believe in ghosts and devils than in the good God. Whence do you suppose they derive their existence and their power?”

I assured him that I was of the same faith as himself, and only asked because I wished to have the opinion of a cultivated man on the subject of this particular legend, which had greatly interested me, and of which there remained so singular an evidence.

After a moment’s pause, he said:

“Think of the facts yourself, sir. This tradition, which is certainly very old, is either true in its main features or it was made to fit the crucifix. Assume this last to be the case, how did so singular an image come into existence? Made to hang the tradition upon? Scarcely in so small a community, where all must have known each other. Besides, it is a work of art, and I have been told that as such it is of rare merit. Such a work could hardly have been produced for an unworthy object, and would have been difficult to substitute for one of inferior workmanship. If I called it a legend, it is because it has an air of romance about it. But God is good, and does what he pleases!”

I had nothing more to say; so I asked what had become of Gretchen, and was told that she had been taken as a lay sister in the small convent at the head of the valley, whence she had continued, to the very day of her death, to come and pray at the foot of the crucifix, where in fact she was at last found dead, in her eighty-seventh year, and that during the whole time she had been regarded as a saint.

“The altar,” he resumed, “is universally regarded with great reverence, and is always spoken of as the Altar of Succor to a very considerable distance up and down the Rhine, and the unusual number of models in wax or wood which you see hanging before it indicate how special favors are reputed to have been granted there.”

“I noticed them,” I replied, “when first I entered Belgium, where I saw many. I was much struck with what I thought the singular idea of offering a leg in wax to obtain the cure of lameness, an eye for blindness, and so on.”

“I perceive, sir,” said the good priest, “that you have fallen into the error of mistaking cause for effect. These models and tokens are in no case hung before the altar until after the cure prayed for has been effected, when it is the pious custom of the people to commemorate the blessing they have received—much as one out of the ten lepers cured by our Lord did—by showing gratitude, that all may see what he has done for them.

“Some of these emblems,” continued he, “have curious histories attached to them, whose events have occurred under my own eye.

“I will give you one instance only, not to be tedious.

“Did you notice a small bottle amongst the objects we speak of?”

I acknowledged that I had not done so, having paid little attention to them.

“Well, there is one there at all events, which I myself attached to the bunch, under the following circumstances:

“Some years ago, two brothers, both young men, were leaving a wharf some miles up the river, at twilight. The steamer having landed its passengers, was on the point of starting, when the elder of the two remonstrated with his brother upon the condition in which he found him; in fact, the youth was addicted to drinking, and gave much trouble to his elder brother, who was a remarkably steady young man. I will not mention their names, as both are living; but for convenience will call the elder Fritz and the younger Carl.

“Carl was given to be quarrelsome in his cups, and on this occasion was more so than usual, and began to struggle with his brother, who wanted to get him on board, as the boat was in the act of starting; in doing so, however, he lost his balance, and they fell into the water together.

“Carl, with the luck which is proverbially attributed to drunkards, was almost immediately pulled out by those who had seen the accident. Fritz, however, appeared to have been carried away by the current, all search proving in vain.

“Carl, now completely sobered, was terribly afflicted, as he was deeply attached to his brother, and remembering the traditional sanctity of the Altar of Succor, he started off and walked all night, and, wet as he was, threw himself at the foot of the altar. There he remained for some hours; whilst prostrate there, another man came in and knelt beside him.

“It is always rather dark at that side altar, which, being situated in the north aisle, was darker still at that hour of the morning.

“I had observed the prostrate man soon after the church had been opened in the morning. When next I passed I saw him prostrate still, with another kneeling beside him.

“Thinking there might be something wrong, I went up, and stooping, laid my hand upon his shoulder; he was wet, and a shiver ran through him at my touch. To my surprise I saw that there was a pool of water round the kneeling man.

“At my touch the man raised himself, exclaiming, as he did so, ‘Yes, I did it; but I did not mean it! Take me if you will!’

“Before I could explain, the other rose to his feet, exclaiming, in a voice of great emotion, ‘Carl!’ In an instant the brothers were in each other’s arms, and explanations were made. It appears that Fritz went down at once, and, being unable to swim, was borne down for some distance under water. On coming to the surface his head came in contact with some substance which he instinctively grasped; it was wood, and was large enough to enable him to keep his head above water. He drifted down the current till, almost dead with cold, he found himself cast ashore at a bend of the river.

“He was glad to find a cottage door open, where he was welcomed to warm himself and to share the peasants’ humble meal. There also he learned that he was not far from A——k and the wonderful Altar of Succor, and at once resolved to come here, moved by gratitude for his escape, and anxiety for his brother, of whose fate he was of course ignorant.

“A year passed, and one morning Carl called upon me, and I then fully learned the particulars I have just related.

“At his request I attached the small bottle to the other tokens, in gratitude, as he said, for the victory there granted to him over the evil habit which must, otherwise, have rendered his life a curse.

“He also left a sum of money for the poor, and told me that his brother and himself were both married, and living as prosperous merchants at a considerable town lower down the Rhine.

“Go thou and do likewise!” added the good priest, laughing as we shook hands at parting.

WHY NOT?

ON THE WAY TO LOURDES.

CONCLUDED.

Leaving Lectoure, the railway keeps along the valley of the Gers, a branch of the Garonne several shades yellower than the Tiber. The sides of the road are covered with genêt, or broom, loaded with yellow blossoms—the emblem of the Plantagenets, to whom this part of France was once subject. It is not long before we come to Mount St. Cricq at the left, where, in the IVth century, the glorious S. Oren, the apostle of the country, demolished a temple of Apollo-Belen, and set up an altar to the only true and uncreated Light under the invocation of S. Quiricus (S. Cyr) and S. Julitta. The church is now gone. A windmill stands near its site, the only prominent object on the hill, which is as bald and parched as if Apollo had claimed it for his own again.

Auch now comes in sight, built on a height, and crowned with the towers of its noble cathedral. The sides of the hill are covered with houses, whose arched galleries are open to the sun and pure mountain air, and gay with vines and flowers. The terraces before them look like hanging gardens, which give a charming freshness to the picturesque old city. The Gers flows along at the foot of the hill as quietly as when Fortunatus sang of its sluggishness centuries ago. We cross it, and gain access to the city by one of the long, narrow, steep, sunless staircases of stone, called pousterles, which remind us of Naples and Perugia. The place, in fact, is quite Italian in its whole aspect. As we ascend one of these flights we see, away up at the top, a large iron cross with all the emblems of the Passion in the centre of the landing-place, and we feel as if we were ascending some Calvaire. There is a broad modern staircase, much more grand and elegant, but not so interesting, dignified by the imposing term of escalier monumental, which takes one up a more gradual and less weary way of two hundred and thirty-two steps—something rather formidable, however, for the fat and scant o’ breath!

These old cities, built on heights for greater security, were powerful holds in the Middle Ages, and all have their history. Their towers are all scarred over with fearful tragedies, relieved here and there by some flower of sweet romance or saintly legend.

Auch was in ancient times called Climberris, the stronghold of the Ausci, who dwelt here before the Roman conquest—descendants of the Iberians from the Caucasian regions, who left their country and settled in Spain and this side of the Pyrenees. The chief city of the most civilized people of the country, a Roman settlement under the Cæsars, the most important place in Novempopulania, the capital of the Counts of Fezensac and Armagnac in the Middle Ages, and a wealthy influential see, whose archbishops took part in all the great movements of the day, Auch was from early times a place of no small importance, however insignificant now.

When Cæsar’s lieutenant, Publius Crassus, took possession of the country, he established a Roman colony on the banks of the Algersius, and the Ausci, descending from their heights, it became so flourishing that it received the imperial name of Augusta Auscorum, and was one of the few cities of the land to which the Roman emperors accorded the Latin right—that is, the power of governing itself. In the year 211, Caracalla allowed it the privilege of having a forum, gymnasium, theatre, baths, etc., and it became the seat of a senate, the head of which was a Roman officer called comes. Roman domination was at first submitted to reluctantly, but it proved an advantage to the city. Literature and the arts were cultivated with success, the people enriched by new sources of industry, sumptuous villas were built in the environs, and roads opened to Toulouse and various parts of Novempopulania. The pre-eminence of the schools here is evident from the poet Ausonius, tutor of the Emperor Gratian, who spent part of his youth at Auch, pursuing his studies under Staphylius and Arborius, both of whom he eulogizes for their learning. Arborius, the brother of Ausonius’ mother, was the son of an astrologer, from a distant part of Gaul, who married a lady of rank in this country and settled here. He taught rhetoric, not only at Auch, but at Toulouse, where he became the confidential friend of Constantine’s brothers, then in a kind of exile. This led to his fortune. The emperor afterward called him to Constantinople, where he was loaded with riches and honors.

Ausonius’ friend, Eutropius, a celebrated Latin author who held offices under Julian the Apostate, had a seat in the vicinity of Auch.

The women, too, of this country were inspired with a taste for mental cultivation, as is shown by Sylvia, sister of the illustrious Rufinus of Elusa, one of the best-versed women of her day in Greek literature, and who rivalled the noble Roman matrons of the time of S. Jerome in her knowledge of sacred science. Sylvia died at Brescia, where her name is still honored, while her native land has nearly forgotten her memory.

The prosperity of Auch was put an end to in the Vth century by the invasion of the Goths and Vandals, and the city was only saved from destruction by the mediation of S. Oren, its bishop. In the VIIIth century the country was overrun by the Moors, who destroyed the whole city, with the exception of a faubourg still known, after more than a thousand years, as the Place de la Maure.

Two centuries after, the Counts of Armagnac built a castle on the summit of the hill where stood the ancient Climberris, and gathered their vassals around them. Here they held a brilliant court which attracted gallant knights and the gayest troubadours of the south. We read that one of the counts, whose stout heart yielded for a time to the softening influences of the poetic muse, went to Toulouse to breathe out his tender lays at the feet of a certain fair lady, Lombarda, but prudence getting the better of his gallantry, he abruptly brought them to an end, and hurried back to the defence of his castle, suddenly besieged by the enemy.

It was also in the Xth century Auch became a metropolitan see, which was so generously endowed by the barons of the country that it became one of the wealthiest and most powerful in the kingdom. Its archbishops were to the great lords of the province what the popes then were to the sovereigns of Europe. They were the lords spiritual, not only of Novempopulania, but the two Navarres. Kings of England wrote them to secure their influence, which was so great that there was a rivalry among the leading families desirous of securing the see for their children. When the Counts of Armagnac transferred their capital to Lectoure, the archbishops became sole lords of the city, and in them centred its history from that time. They bore the proudest names in the land, and maintained all the state to which their birth and the importance of their office entitled them. We read that when they came to take possession of their see, the Baron de Montaut, at the head of all the neighboring gentry, met them at the entrance to the city, and with bared head and knee took the archbishop’s mule by the bridle and led him to the castle. This was in accordance with the customs of feudal times, when vassals offered homage to their liege lords by bending the bared knee to the ground, an extension, we suppose, of the Oriental practice of baring the feet. We learn from Andres de Poça, in his work, De la Antigua Lenga y Comarcas de las Españas, that the lords of Biscay took their oaths of fealty in the sanctuary in this way—a custom derived, perhaps, from the ancient Cantabrians, who, as Strabo tells us, went to battle with one foot shod and the other bare, reminding one of the touching nursery rhyme of “My son John,” or the French ditty which is more to the point:

There were two other bishops in the south of France who received a similar mark of homage at taking possession of their sees. At Lectoure, it was the Seigneur de Castelnau, and at Cahors the Baron de Ceissac, whose duty it was to offer it. At Auch, the Baron de Montaut afterwards served the archbishop at dinner and received the silver plate on the table as his perquisite. Dom Brugelles, in his Chronicles of the diocese, gives a ludicrous account of the disappointment of a Baron of Montaut at the arrival of a cardinal-archbishop of simple habits, whose service was of glass, though of fine workmanship, which so disappointed the baron that he forgot his loyalty and smashed all the dishes, to the great disgust of the cardinal, who left the city and never returned.

One of the Archbishops of Auch, Geraud de Labarthe, went with Richard the Lion-Hearted to the Holy Land, and had command of an armament. He knew also, it seems, how to wield his spiritual weapons, for on the way he stopped in Sicily for a theological encounter with the celebrated abbot Joachim, in which he proved himself worthy of his descent from the Lords of the Four Valleys. He died in the Holy Land in 1191, leaving a foundation for the repose of his mother’s soul, a touching incident in the life of this valorous churchman.

Another archbishop established the Truce of God in his province, issued indulgences to encourage his people to go to the aid of the Spanish in their crusade against the Moors, and finally placed himself at the head of those who responded to his appeal and went to the assistance of Don Alfonso of Aragon, where he distinguished himself by his bravery and religious zeal.

Other prelates have a simpler record which it is pleasant to come upon in such rude times. Of one we read he granted an indulgence of three days to all who should bow the head at hearing the Holy Name of Jesus. This was in 1383, when S. Bernardin of Sienna, the great propagator of this devotion, was still a child.

In the XIVth century we find Cardinal Philip d’Alençon, of the blood royal of France, among the archbishops of Auch. He died in Rome in the odor of sanctity, and was buried in the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere, where his beautiful Gothic tomb—a chef-d’œuvre of the XIVth century—may be seen in the left transept. In the arch is a fresco of the martyrdom of his patron, S. Philip, who was crucified with his head downward, like S. Peter; and beneath lies the cardinal on his tomb, sculptured in marble, with hands folded in eternal prayer. Above are his cardinal’s hat and the fleurs-de-lis of France, and below is the epitaph:

This prelate was the nephew and godson of Philippe le Bel, the destroyer of the Knights-Templars and persecutor of Pope Boniface VIII., who merited the stigma Dante casts on him in his Purgatorio:

“When, O Lord! shall I behold that vengeance accomplished which, being already determined in thy secret judgment, thy retributive justice even now contemplates with delight?” continues the spirit met by the Divine Poet in the place of expiation—words that might be echoed in these days, when

We are here reminded it was at Auch all the Knights-Templars of Bigorre, with their commander, Bernard de Montagu, were executed. M. Martin, in his History of France, observes that all the traditions of this region are favorable to the Templars. There is not one that is not to their credit. The old saying, “Drink like a Templar,” has no echo in the mountains of Bigorre. Many of their churches are still standing, objects of interest to the archæologist, and of devotion to the pious. There are six or seven skulls shown at Gavarnie, said to be of the martyred Templars, and every year, on the anniversary of the destruction of the Order, a knight armed from top to toe, and wearing the great white mantle of the Order, appears in the churchyard and cries three times: “Who will defend the Holy Temple? Who will deliver the Sepulchre of the Lord?” Then the seven heads come to life and reply: “No one! no one! The Temple is destroyed!” How earnestly these unfortunate knights begged to be tried by the Inquisition is well known. They felt there was some chance for justice at a tribunal in which there was a religious element.

A Cardinal d’Armagnac was Archbishop of Auch when the tragedy of Rodèle took place, which rivals that of the Torre della Fame at Pisa in horror. Geraud, brother of Count Bernard VII. of Armagnac, having married his son to Margaret of Comminges, took up arms against her for forsaking her youthful husband and withdrawing to the castle of Muret. Count Bernard took advantage of this to make war on Geraud for holding the county of Pardiac, on which he himself had claims, and pursued his brother from one castle to another. Finally taking him captive, he carried him to the fortress of Rodèle, and threw him into a deep pit, where he died of hunger and cold in four or five days.

Geraud’s two sons, John and Guilhem, alarmed at his captivity, but unaware of his fate, were induced to come to Auch to implore the clemency of their ferocious uncle, and on Good Friday, 1403, the Count de l’Isle Jourdain, kneeling with the poor children at his feet, besought him to pardon them, in memory of the Divine Passion that day celebrated; but neither the day nor the helplessness of the children, so touchingly alluded to by their advocate, softened the inflexible count. He had them imprisoned in the castle of Lavardens, and shortly after, Guilhem, a lad of barely fifteen, was tied to a horse and taken to the fortress of Rodèle. There he was shown the horrible pit into which his father had been let down alive to incur so fearful a death. The poor boy looked into the fatal pit, fell senseless to the ground, and was never restored to life. His brother John, the unhappy husband of the faithless Margaret of Comminges, was carried to the castle of Brugens, where horrid tortures awaited him. He had only escaped from the hatred of his wife to fall into the hands of Bonne de Berri, Count Bernard’s wife, a woman of insatiable ambition and relentless purpose. This new Frédégonde put his eyes out by passing a red-hot brazier before them, and then, remembering the strength God gave the blind Samson to take vengeance on his enemies, she had him thrown into a deep moat, where he died of hunger.

Never was there a family that reflected more faithfully than the Armagnacs all the vices and defects as well as the virtues of the Middle Ages. Its history contains every element to fix the attention, with its tragedies, its examples of brutal power, its prodigies of valor and heroism, its struggles in the cause of liberty, and, finally, in its marvels of faith. Religious influence sooner or later asserted its triumph in the heart. Many of the counts laid aside their armor for the cowl and scapular, and atoned for their sins in the cloister. They were benefactors to the Church, they founded monasteries, they fought in the holy wars. We find them with Godfrey of Bouillon under the walls of Jerusalem, and fighting against the Moors with the Kings of Castile and Aragon. Among the most renowned members of the race, we must not forget Count John I., a native of Auch, whose valor placed him on a level with Du Guesclin, the greatest captain of the age. For a time they fought on the same side, but they met as opponents on the plain of Navarrete, where Count John fought for Don Pedro and greatly contributed to the victory. Du Guesclin was taken prisoner. For more than thirty years Count John was one of the strongest supporters of the King of France. After the battle of Crécy, he stopped the tide of English invasion, and when the Black Prince was covering Aquitaine with blood and ruins in 1355, he alone ventured to resist him and obstruct his victorious march.

After the defeat at Poitiers, he veiled the humiliation of the king with the splendor of his munificence. He sent the king all kinds of provisions, as well as silver utensils, for his table. He convoked the Etats-Généraux to organize forces to avert calamities that threatened the country. He fought beside the Duke of Anjou and Du Guesclin in the immortal campaigns of 1369 and 1370. This was the period in which the grandeur of the house of Armagnac culminated. John I. married Reine de Got, niece of Pope Clement V., whom Dante thrusts lower than Simon Magus. She was buried in the choir of the Cordeliers at Auch, now, alas! a granary. The count’s second wife was Beatrice de Clermont, great-granddaughter of S. Louis IX., king of France, and one of his daughters married the brother of Charles V., and the other the oldest son of Don Pedro of Aragon.

Such were the royal pretensions of this great house. Descended from the Merovingian race of kings through Sanche Mitarra, the terrible scourge of the Moors, who lies buried at S. Oren’s Priory, founded by the first Count of Armagnac, on the banks of the Gers, the Counts of Auch, as they were sometimes called, bore themselves right royally. They acknowledged no suzerain. They were the first to call themselves counts by the grace of God, a formula then used to express the divine right, but in the sense of S. Paul and of the Middle Ages, which was simply acknowledging that all power comes from God, and that the right of exercising it has for its true source not the force of arms, but in God alone. We must come down to the XVth century to find the jealous susceptibility that only interpreted, in the sense of absolute independence of all human power, such expressions as Dei gratiâ; per Dei gratiam; Dei dono, etc., which had been used with the sole intention of expressing a truth of the Christian faith, a profound sentiment of subordination to divine authority. This intention is nowhere so explicit as in the legend on the ancient money of Béarn, where its rulers used almost the words of the apostle: Gratia autem Dei sumus id quod sumus.

Charles VII. thought it worth while to forbid John IV. of Armagnac, in 1442, the use of such formulas. Seven years after, he obliged the Dukes of Burgundy to declare they bore no prejudice to the crown of France. Louis XI. vainly tried to prevent the Duke of Brittany from using them. Since that time it has been claimed as the exclusive right of sovereigns. Bishops, however, retain the formula Dei gratia in their public acts of diocesan administration, with the addition: et apostolicæ sedis, which dates from the end of the XIIIth century only.

It was the independence and royal pretensions of such great vassals that determined the kings of France to destroy their power. Under the sons of Philip le Bel began the great struggle between the crown and the feudal aristocracy. In order to incorporate their provinces with the royal domains, they availed themselves of every pretext to crush them, and such pretexts were by no means wanting in the case of the Armagnacs, where they could claim the necessity of protecting the eternal laws on which are based all family and social rights and the principles of true religion. History is full of the cruelty of the last counts, and forgets all it could offer by way of contrast. It forgets to speak of Count John III., who put an end to the brigandage of the great bands in southern France, and went to find a premature death under the walls of Alessandria, in an expedition too chivalrous not to be glorious. It insists on the brutal ferocity and excessive ambition of Bernard VII., the great constable, and passes over all that could palliate his offences in so rude an age—his fine qualities, his zeal for the maintenance of legitimate authority, and his interest in the welfare of the Church. It lays bare the criminal passion of Count John V., and forgets his repentance and reparation, as well as the holy austerities of Isabella in the obscure cell of a Spanish monastery, where she effaced the scandal she had given the world.

Count John was the last real lord of Armagnac. He filled up the cup of wrath, and his humiliations and frightful death, the long, unjust captivity of his brother Charles, the scaffold on which perished Jacques de Nemours, and the abjection into which his children were plunged, are fearful examples of divine retribution.

The spoils of the counts of Armagnac were given as a dowry to Margaret of Valois when she married Henry II. of Navarre, who, as well as her first husband, the Duc d’Alençon, descended from the Armagnacs. Henry and Margaret made their solemn entry into Auch in 1527, and the latter, as Countess of Armagnac, took her seat as honorary canon in the cathedral. Her arms are still over the first stall at the left, beneath the lion rampant of the Armagnacs—a stall assigned those lords as lay canons, in the time of Bernard III., who was the first to pay homage to S. Mary of Auch.

Margaret’s grandson, Henry IV., united the title of Armagnac to the crown of France, and Louis XIV., on his way from St. Jean-de-Luz, where he was married to Maria Theresa, the Infanta of Spain, passed through Auch, and, attending divine service in the cathedral, took his seat in the choir as Count of Armagnac.

Napoleon III. accepted the title of honorary canon of this church.

The cathedral at Auch is remarkable for the stained glass windows of the time of the Renaissance, which Catherine de Medicis wished to carry off to Paris, and the one hundred and thirteen stalls of the choir, the wonderful carvings of which rival those of Amiens. Napoleon I., on his return from Spain, admired and coveted these beautiful stalls, and wished to remove the old rood-loft which concealed them from the public. He endowed the church with an annual sum, and expressed his regret so fair a Sposa should be bereaved of its lord—the hierarchy not being fully restored in France at that time.

The canons of the cathedral were formerly required to be nobilis sanguine vel litteris—noble of birth or distinguished in letters. That they keep up to their standard in learning seems evident from the reputation of one of their number, the savant Abbé Canéto, one of the most distinguished archæologists of the country, whose works are indispensable to the visitor to Auch and the surrounding places.

It is quite impressive to see these venerable canons seated in their carved stalls, worthy of princes, singing the divine Office. Their capes, we noticed, are trimmed with ermine, probably a mark of their dignity. To wear furs of any kind was in the Middle Ages an indication of rank, or, at least, wealth. The English Parliament made a statute in 1334 forbidding all persons wearing furs that had not an income of one hundred pounds a year.

In this church is the altar of Notre Dame d’Auch, the oldest shrine of the Virgin in the province, first set up at ancient Elusa by S. Saturninus, the Apostle of Toulouse, and brought here by S. Taurin in the IVth century, when that place was destroyed by the barbarians.

The similarity of S. Saturninus’ devotion to that of the present day is remarkable—devotion to Mary and the Chair of Peter. Everywhere he erected churches in their honor, as at Elusa, now the town of Eauze. At Auch he dedicated a church to the Prince of the Apostles, where now stands the little church of S. Pierre, on the other side of the Gers, once burned down by the Huguenots.

The paintings of the Stations of the Cross in the cathedral were given by a poor servant girl, whose heart at the hour of death turned towards the sanctuary where she had so often experienced the benefit of meditating on the Sacred Passion that she was desirous of inciting others to so salutary a devotion.

In one of the chapels is a monument to the memory of M. d’Etigny, whose statue is on the public promenade—the last Intendant of the province, who employed a part of his immense fortune in building the fine roads that lead to the watering-places in the Pyrenees, which have added so much to the prosperity of the country. But he was one of those cui bono men who always sacrifice the picturesque and the interesting on some plea of public utility. He destroyed the mediæval character of the city, with its narrow streets, curious overhanging houses—of which a few specimens are left—and ancient walls with low arched gateways, made when mules alone were used for bringing in merchandise. When any sacrifice is to be made, why must it always fall on what appeals to the eye and the imagination? Why must some people insist on effacing the venerable records of past ages to make room for their own utilitarian views? There are too many of such palimpsests. Is not the world large enough for all human tastes to find room to express themselves?

We had, however, no reason to grumble at M. d’Etigny’s fine roads among the mountains, which saved us, in many instances, from being transported like the ancient merchandise of Auch, and we nearly forgot his enormities when we found ourselves at Bagnères-de-Luchon under the shade of the fine trees he planted in the Cours d’Etigny, where tourists and invalids love to gather in the evening.

M. d’Etigny also took an interest in the religious prosperity of the country. On the corner-stone of a church at Vic Fezensac is the inscription: Dominus d’Etigny me posuit, 1760. This church was built by Père Pascal, a Franciscan, out of the ruins of the old castle of the Counts of Fezensac, which he obtained permission to use in spite of the town authorities, by applying to Mme. de Pompadour, then all-powerful at court. Do not suppose the good friar paid the least homage to wickedness in high places by so doing. On the contrary, he boldly began his petition: “Madame, redeem your sins by your alms.” Instead of taking offence, the duchess profited by the counsel. The père, returning from Auch with the royal permission, met some of his opponents, wholly unsuspicious of the truth, to whose pleasantries he replied: “Let me pass. I am exhausted, for I carry in my cowl the ruins of the castle of Vic.”

Auch in those days was only lighted by the lamps that hung before the niches of the Virgin, and the only night-watchman up to the last century was the crier, who went about the streets at midnight calling aloud on the people to be mindful of their soul’s salvation and pray for the dead. This practice was called the miseremini, because the crier sometimes made use of the words of Job sung in the Mass for the Dead: Miseremini, miseremini mei, vos saltem amici mei, quia manus Domini tetigit me—“Have pity on me, have pity on me, O ye my friends! for the hand of the Lord hath touched me.” It was also called the Reveillé, from the beginning of the verses he sometimes chanted:

This crier acted the part of a policeman, keeping an eye on the evil-doer, and watching over the safety of the town. If he discovered a door ajar, he entered and aroused the inmates. A startling apparition he must have been to the offenders of the law. He wore a death’s head and cross-bones embroidered before and behind, and carried a small bell in his hand, which he rang from time to time as he passed through the narrow streets with his lugubrious cry. Of course he was a public functionary of importance. He figured in full costume in the great religious processions and took a part in all the public festivities.

On the sunny terraces of Auch grow the seedless pears which have been so renowned from time immemorial that they have their place in the annals of the city. We have fully tested the qualities of these unrivalled pears, and can sincerely echo all that has been said in their praise. Duchesne, the physician of Henry IV., an empiric of the school of Paracelsus, and a famous person in his day, does not forget in his Diæteticon to mention them among the most famous productions of his country. He places them in the first rank, and those of Tours in the second. According to him, they originated in the town of Crustumerium in Italy, and their name, derived therefrom, was softened by the Italians into Cristiano, whence that of Bon Chrétien, as they are sometimes called, though not their right name. Others call them Pompéienne, because, as they say, introduced by Pompidian, an ancient bishop of Eauze. But everybody with a proper sense of the case will stoutly attribute them, in accordance with the popular tradition, to the great S. Oren, whose blessing gave them their rare qualities, especially the peculiarity of being seedless when the trees grow within the limit of the city, though this is by no means the case with those that grow in the environs.

Dom Brugelles, a Benedictine of last century, mentions this peculiarity in his Chronicles of the diocese, and says they were in such demand in his time as to be worth sometimes thirty-six francs a dozen.

Père Aubéry, in his Latin poem of Augusta Auscorum, is enthusiastic in their praise: “How I love the aspect of these fair gardens enclosed among sumptuous dwellings! What a wealth of flowers! And the trees bear a fruit still more worthy of your admiration. The Pompéienne pear, delicious as the ambrosia of the gods, was reserved for the soil of this city alone. The trees without its walls, even those that grow close to its trenches, do not produce the like. This most glorious of fruit is an inappreciable gift of heaven and earth, which is praised throughout the kingdom and sold at a great price in distant lands.[145]

“The pears of the fertile gardens of Touraine cannot be compared to those whose old name of Pompéienne is now lost in that of Bon Chrétien. The pears at Tours are as inferior to those of Auch as other honey in sweetness to that of Hybla. Nay, should the gods themselves by chance know of these trees, should they taste of these Auscitain pears so delicious to the palate, they would despise the dishes served at their celestial banquets—yes, scorn the flowing nectar and sweet ambrosia that feed their immortality.

“And as the admirable name of Bon Chrétien is only given the pears that grow in the gardens of the city, and belongs not to those produced elsewhere; as it is only within these walls they acquire so agreeable and appetizing a flavor, their name is a presage that the inhabitants shall never be infected by the contagion and venom of heresy—a scourge that has attacked almost all the towns of Armagnac—and that the Mother of Christ, patroness of Auch, by averting this poison, shall keep them faithful to the rites of their ancestors, and fill them with eternal love for the ancient religion.”

M. Lafforgue, in his History of Auch, says these pears are so prized that they are often presented to princes, governors, and other distinguished characters. When Elizabeth Farnese, Queen of Spain, passed through Auch on her way to join her husband Philip V., in Nov., 1714, the city consuls offered her, as they had done the Dukes of Berry and Burgundy in 1701, some of the poires d’Auch. Twenty dozen, which cost one hundred and forty-three livres, were presented her in straw boxes made by the Ursuline nuns.[146]

When Mr. Laplagne, a native of this part of the country, and Minister of Finance under Louis Philippe, boasted in M. Guizot’s presence, with true Gascon expansiveness, of the seedless pears that grow on the terraces of Auch, the latter, with the distrust of certain great minds, expressed some incredulity. M. Laplagne resolved to convince the President of the Council publicly, and procured at some expense an enormous pear, ripened on the very terrace which a century before had produced the fruit so vaunted by Dom Brugelles. Fifty guests were invited to witness the result. They assembled around the table, in the centre of which was displayed the wonderful pear from Auch. M. Guizot could hardly believe his eyes at such a prodigy, and declared himself convinced. The dessert was impatiently awaited. The Minister of Finance, certain of victory, insisted on M. Guizot’s opening the pear. It was set before him. He cut it in two with some difficulty—it contained four large seeds!

In spite of this exceptional case, the poires d’Auch (their right name, by the way) that grow within the limits of the city are generally without seeds. The superabundant pulp seems to stifle them. They are still the pride of the place, and it was only a year or two ago a number were sent to his Holiness Pius IX.

Père Aubéry, whom I have quoted, was connected with the college at Auch, formerly under the direction of the Jesuits. S. Francis Regis was also for some time one of its professors. Among the eminent men educated here may be mentioned Cardinal d’Ossat, who, when chargé d’affaires at Rome, succeeded in obtaining the absolution of Henry IV. from the Holy See. He was a poor country lad, whose condition, exciting the pity of the canons of Trie, they made him a choirboy, and sent him to school. He became successively a charity scholar of the Jesuits at Auch, the protégé of Cardinal de Foix and his secretary of embassy at Rome, and, finally, chargé d’affaires at the Papal court and Cardinal-bishop of Bayeux. He died at Rome in 1604, bequeathing the little he possessed to the poor and his two secretaries. This celebrated diplomatist was an honor to his country and the church that developed his talents.

The famous Nostradamus was another pupil of this college.

Bernard du Poey, a disciple of Buchanan, and a poet of some note, was professor here when the college was under the direction of laymen. We give one of his epigrams, written while connected with this institution:

“The love of light makes us cast away every vestige of barbarism: this house opens not to darkness.”

“Barbarism”—“light”—“darkness”—a jargon often heard in our day also, and it still finds its dupes. The would-be metaphysicians and theologians who use it should meditate on this sentence of Berkeley’s: “We first raise a dust, and then complain we cannot see!”

Once more on the way. It is not till we approach Rabastens we see an opening in the outer range of the Pyrenees, and behold Mt. Maladetta raising heavenward its glittering diadem of glaciers. Behind is Spain, religious Spain, “land of an eternal crusade” and wondrous saints. Rabastens is one of the most ancient towns in Bigorre, and celebrated in the religious wars: It was here Blaise de Monluc received the frightful wound in his face which obliged him to wear a mask the rest of his life, and gave him the leisure to write his Commentaries, which Henry IV. called the Soldier’s Bible. This old warrior, deprived of nearly all his limbs, coolly relates a thousand incidents of incredible bravery in the boasting manner of a true Gascon, that does not ill become a book written for the defenders of Gascony.

Twelve miles or so further on is Tarbes, the chef-lieu of the Hautes Pyrénées—“gentille Reine.”

“Bigourdaine,” as Jasmin says, “splendidement assise au milieu de la plaine la plus fraiche, la plus fertile et la plus variée.” The water from the Adour, first brought here to fill the moat that surrounded the city, is now used to turn mills and fertilize the meadows, which are wonderfully fresh, affording a charming contrast to the mountains in the background.

The foundation of Tarbes is lost in the remoteness of time. Its occupation by the Romans is evident from the camp still pointed out in the vicinity. Bigorre, of which it was the principal city, was made a comté in the VIIIth century, and its succession of counts was uninterrupted till Henry IV. ascended the throne of France. Its first count was Enéco (or Inigo) Arista, or The Bold, who became King of Navarre, and rivalled the Cid in prowess.

Bigorre was ceded to the English by the treaty of Brittany, but when war again broke out between England and France two great barons of the province, Menaud de Barbazan and the Sire d’Anchin, as Froissart relates, seized the city and castle of Tarbes, and all Bigorre rose to expel the English, who only continued to hold for a time the impregnable fortresses of Lourdes and Mauvezin. This Lord of Barbazan was a companion in arms of Du Guesclin and took sides with the Armagnacs, his kinsmen, in their famous contest with the house of Foix. His son, Arnauld Guilhem de Barbazan, was the valiant knight who wore so worthily the fair flower of a blameless life that he received the title, which he was the first to bear, of the chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, conferred on him by his contemporaries. Monstrelet says he was a noble knight, prompt in action, fertile in expedients, and renowned in arms. He was the leader in the famous encounter between seven French and seven English knights at Saintonge in 1402, when the latter challenged the French to a trial of arms out of love for les dames de leurs pensées. The French knights began the day by devoutly hearing Mass and receiving the Holy Body of the Lord. Jouvenel des Ursins depicts the fearful encounter, which took place in presence of a vast number of spectators, among whom was the Count of Armagnac. Lances were shivered and terrible blows given with sword and battle-axe, but it was Barbazan who decided the day, and the English were forced to acknowledge themselves defeated. The conquerors, clothed in white, were led in triumph to the King, who loaded them with presents. To the Chevalier de Barbazan he gave a purse of gold and a sword on one side of which was graven, Barbazan sans reproche, in letters of gold; and on the other, Ut lapsu graviore ruant. This sword is still preserved in the Château de Faudoas by the descendants of Barbazan’s sister. The chivalric deeds that won it were commemorated not only in the chronicles of the time, but in three ballads of Christine de Pisan.

Barbazan was as noble in heart as heroic in action. He took sides with Count Bernard VII. of Armagnac against the Duke of Burgundy, but, when the latter fell a victim to treachery, he indignantly condemned the crime, and said he would rather have died than had a hand in it. He fought side by side with Dunois, Lahire, and La Trémouille, at Orleans, Auxerre, and many another battle-field. His last exploit was to rout eight thousand English and Burgundian troops near Chalons, with only three thousand, a few months after the atrocious murder of Joan of Arc, under whose white banner he had fought.

So valuable were his services that the king conferred on him the magnificent title of “Restaurateur du royaume et de la couronne de France,” and added the fleurs-de-lis to his arms. Soldiers received knighthood from his hands as if he were a king. When he died, he was buried at St. Denis among the kings of France with all the honors of royalty—a supreme honor, of which there are only two other instances in French history—Du Guesclin and Turenne.

The feudal castle of Barbazan is on a steep hill a few miles southeast of Tarbes. The Roman inscriptions found there show it to be of extreme antiquity. On the summit of the hill is the chapel of Notre Dame de Piétat, built by Anne de Bourbon, Lord of Barbazan, to receive a miraculous Madonna that had long been an object of veneration to the people around. He founded two weekly Masses here, one in honor of the holy name of God, and the other of the Virgin, and he bequeathed lands for the support of the chapel, which is still a pious resort for pilgrims.

The Cathedral of Tarbes is built on the ruins of the ancient fortress of Bigorre, which gave its name to the surrounding province. The bishops have an important place in the annals of the country. Under the Merovingian race of kings they held the rank of princes, and were the peers of the proudest barons in the land. We find several saints in the list—S. Justin, S. Faustus, and S. Landeol, whose venerable forms look down from the windows of the chancel in the cathedral. Gregory of Tours mentions S. Justin, and speaks of a lily on his tomb that bloomed every year on the day of his martyrdom.

Bernard II., a bishop of Tarbes in the year 1009, merits the admiration of posterity for his efforts to relieve his flock during a terrible famine of three years, in which people devoured one another to such an extent that a law was made condemning those who ate human flesh to be burned alive. The holy bishop, like S. Exuperius of Toulouse, sold all the vessels and ornaments of the church, and gave all he possessed, to alleviate the wants of his people.

His successor stayed a civil war that broke out, to add to the distress of the country, by assembling the chief lords of the land and conjuring them not to add fire and pillage to the horrors of famine, but rather seek to disarm the vengeance of heaven by their prayers. He established the Truce of God in his diocese, and had the happiness of seeing peace and abundance restored to the land. These old bishops seemed to have some correct notions of their obligations, though they did live in the darkest of the Middle Ages!

In the time of a bishop who belonged to the house of Foix appeared a comet which alarmed all Europe. The Pope profited by the universal terror to recommend a stricter practice of the Christian virtues, in order, as he said, if any danger were at hand, that the faithful might be saved. The Bishop of Tarbes instituted public processions on the occasion.

It was a Bishop of Tarbes, the Cardinal Gabriel de Gramont, who in the XVIth century played so important a part in the negotiations between Henry VIII. of England and the Pope to dissolve the marriage of the former with Catherine of Aragon. The king pretended to act from conscientious motives, and said the Bishop of Tarbes confirmed his scruples. We need something more than the mere word of a monarch who violated the most solemn promises and obligations to induce us to believe in the complicity of the bishop, though, deceived by the representations of the king, and alarmed at the consequences of a rupture with the Holy See, he may have endeavored to temporize, that the crisis might be delayed.

Tarbes was taken by the Huguenots under the ferocious Count de Montgomery in the XVIth century. He devastated the cathedral, and burned its fine organ, its altars, vestments, choral books, library, and chapter-house. The bells were melted down, the bishop’s house pillaged and burned, as well as the residences of the canons, the convents of the Cordeliers, Carmelites, etc. The bishop was forced to retreat to the mountains, where, charmed by the picturesque heights above the valley of Luz, he re-established the springs of S. Sauveur, and built a little chapel with the inscription: Vos haurietis aquas de fontibus Salvatoris; whence the name since given this watering-place was derived.

It is recorded of a bishop in the XVIIth century, as something extraordinary, that, contrary to custom, he allowed his flock, in a time of famine, to eat meat during Lent on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. He probably had the liberal proclivities of Bishop Hébert of Agen, already mentioned!

Finally, it was a Bishop of Tarbes who, in these days, restored four devout chapels of the Virgin, of ancient renown in the country, but profaned at the Revolution and left desolate, and gave them back to Mary with priests to minister at their altars: Notre Dame de Garaison, in a valley of the Hautes Pyrénées; Notre Dame de Piétat, overlooking the plain of Tarbes; Notre Dame de Poueylahun, on a picturesque peak that rises from the valley of Azun; and Notre Dame de Héas, the Madonna of shepherds, in a hollow of the wild mountains near the Spanish frontier—a powerful quadrilateral for the defence of this diocese of Mary. The memory of Bishop Lawrence will likewise be for ever associated with the church of Notre Dame de Lourdes, for it was he who, by his zeal, prudence, and spiritual insight contributed so greatly to its foundation. It became the cherished object of interest in his old age. He begged for it, labored for it, and watched over the progress of the work. His last act before attending the Council of the Vatican was a pilgrimage to the sacred Grotto, and while at Rome his heart was constantly turning to this new altar in Mary’s honor, and testifying great joy at the splendor of the solemnities. He died at Rome in January, 1870, and his remains were brought back to Tarbes for burial.

At Tarbes we changed cars for Lourdes. Here we received our first impressions of the great religious movement in the country, manifested by the immense pilgrimages, which rival those of the Middle Ages. We encountered a train of pilgrims with red crosses on their breasts and huge rosaries around their necks. There were gentlemen and ladies, and priests and sisters of different religious orders. Among them was a cardinal, whose hand people knelt to kiss as he issued from the cars. They all had radiant faces, as if they had been on some joyful mission instead of a penitential pilgrimage. But one of the fruits of penitence and faith is joy in the highest sense of the word. Spenser wisely makes the proud Sansfoy the father of Sansjoy.

Leaving them behind, we kept on in full view of the mountains along a fine plateau called Lanne Maurine, or the Land of the Moors. The Moorish invasion, though more than a thousand years ago, has left ineffaceable traces all through this country. The traveller is always coming across them. In one place is the Fountain of the Moors; in another the Castle of the Moors; and there are many families who still bear the names of Maure and Mouret. The Lanne Maurine is so called from a bloody combat which took place here to dispute the possession of the plain. It was a priest who roused the people to arms and led them against the infidel, whom they smote hip and thigh. A grateful people have erected an equestrian statue to his memory at the entrance of his village church.

We were now rapidly approaching Lourdes. Already the Pic du Gers rose out of the valley sacred to Mary, and the heart instinctively turns from everything else to hail the new star that has risen in these favored heavens to diffuse the pure radiance of the Immaculate Conception!

A LITTLE BIRD.

EARLY ANNALS OF CATHOLICITY IN NEW JERSEY.

The first navigators who are known to have sailed along the seaboard, and perhaps to have landed on the soil of that part of America now called New Jersey, were Catholics, and in fact made their voyages before Protestantism was heard of. These hardy men were Sebastian Cabot, a Venetian in the service of King Henry VII. of England, who sailed from Bristol in the month of May, 1498, and, proceeding considerably to the north, afterwards turned south and followed the coast-line as far as the Chesapeake; and John Verazzano, a Florentine in the pay of the King of France, who, taking a southerly course to America in 1524, proceeded along the coast from Florida to the fiftieth degree of north latitude, and is supposed to have entered the harbor of New York. The earliest colony established here was about 1620, when Dutch Calvinists (emigrants from Holland) settled the town of Bergen; and in 1638, a party of Swedes, who were Lutherans, made several settlements on the shore of the Delaware. They were under the patronage of their celebrated Queen Christina, who later became a Catholic. In 1664, a grant of the country between the Connecticut and the Delaware rivers was made by King Charles II. of England—the Swedes having been subjugated by the Hollanders, and these in their turn by the English—to his brother the Duke of York, who afterwards was a sincere convert to the Catholic faith, and reigned as James II. That portion of this territory which is now New Jersey was sold by the royal patron to two proprietors, one of whom was Sir George Carteret; and it was in his honor that it received its present name, for his having defended during the Parliamentary war against the Revolutionists the island of Jersey, which is one of the so-called Channel Isles on the coast of France, and is full of ancient churches and other memorials of the Catholic faith, introduced there by S. Helier in the VIth century.

But apart from the name there was nothing that recalled the Catholic religion in New Jersey. The most intense anti-Catholic sentiment was prevalent, and the bitter fanaticism of the mother country was extended even to these parts with perhaps increased virulence. Thus, in 1679, the 26th of November was appointed a day of thanksgiving in the colony for deliverance from what was called “that horrid plot of the Papists to murder the King (Charles II.) and destroy all the Protestants!”—which was the infamous affair of Titus Oates, gotten up maliciously against the Catholics to have still another pretext for persecuting them. The whole province having been divided into two parts, called respectively East and West New Jersey, the latter was settled, to mention only the English-speaking population, mostly by members of the Society of Friends, commonly called Quakers, from England, but the former by Scotch Presbyterians and Congregationalists from New England; and of this part Robert Barclay was appointed first governor for life, but, having power to name a deputy, he remained in Scotland. This miserable man, after having become a Catholic in France, where he had an uncle a priest, who was at the expense of educating him, relapsed into heresy shortly after returning to his native country, where his religion was proscribed, and finally joined the Quakers, for whom he wrote the famous Apology. A circumstance in the life of this apostate shows well the constancy of the royal convert who lost three kingdoms for his faith, and must have reminded him of his own instability upon the same matter. Barclay was in London in 1688, probably on business connected with his government of East New Jersey, and solicited an interview with King James. The revolution was already breaking, and his treacherous son-in-law, afterwards William III., was on his way to dethrone him; when, standing by an open window of the palace, his Majesty observed to the governor that the wind was fair for the Prince of Orange to come over: whereupon Barclay replied that it was hard no expedient could be found to satisfy the people. The king declared he would do anything becoming a gentleman except “parting with liberty of conscience, which he never would while he lived.” The king was indeed a martyr to this principle, and how much it was despised by his Protestant betrayers may be seen, to give an example out of these parts, from the instruction given in 1703 to Lord Cornbury, governor of the Jerseys (as well as of New York), “to permit liberty of conscience to all persons except Papists”; and this barbarous intolerance continued as long as the colonies remained united to England. Every now and then glaring cases of anti-Catholic bigotry, calculated only to perpetuate civil dissensions sprung from religious differences, were found in the history of the colony; as, for instance, in 1757, when the principal edifice of the College of New Jersey at Princeton was named by Governor Belcher Nassau Hall—“to express,” he said, “the honor we retain in this remote part of the globe to the immortal memory of the glorious King William III., who was a branch of the illustrious house of Nassau, and who, under God, was the great deliverer of the British nation from those two monstrous furies, Popery and slavery.” About this period there were a few Jesuit priests in Maryland and Pennsylvania; and the earliest account that we have of Catholics in New Jersey is in 1744, when we read that Father Theodore Schneider, a distinguished German Jesuit who had professed philosophy and theology in Europe, and been rector of a university, coming to the American Provinces, “visited New Jersey and held church at Iron Furnaces there.” This good missionary was a native of Bavaria. He founded the mission at Goshenhoppen, now in Berks county, Pennsylvania, about forty-five miles from Philadelphia, and ministered to German Catholics, their descendants, and others. Having some skill in medicine, he used to cure the body as well as the soul; and, travelling about on foot or on horseback under the name of Doctor Schneider (leaving to the Smelfunguses to discover whether he were of medicine or divinity), he had access to places where he could not otherwise have gone without personal danger; but sometimes his real character was found out, and he was several times raced and shot at in New Jersey. He used to carry about with him on his missionary excursions into this province a manuscript copy of the Roman Missal, carefully written out in his own handwriting and bound by himself. His poverty or the difficulty of procuring printed Catholic liturgical books from Europe, or, we are inclined to think, the danger of discovery should such an one with its unmistakable marks of “Popery” about it (which he probably dispensed with in his manuscript), fall into the hands of heretics, must have led him to this labor of patience and zeal. Father Schneider, who may be reckoned the first missionary of New Jersey, died on the 11th of July, 1764. Another Jesuit used to visit the province occasionally after 1762, owing to the growing infirmities of Father Schneider, and there still exist records of baptisms performed by him here. This was the Rev. Robert Harding, a native of England, who arrived in America in 1732. He died at Philadelphia on the 1st of September, 1772. But the priest principally connected with the early missions in New Jersey is the Rev. Ferdinand Farmer. He was born in South Germany in 1720, and, having entered the Society of Jesus, was sent to Maryland in 1752. His real name was Steenmeyer, but on coming to this country he changed it into one more easily pronounced by English-speaking people. He was learned and zealous, and for many years performed priestly duties in New Jersey at several places in the northern part, and seems to have been the first to visit this colony regularly. In his baptismal register the following among other places are named, together with the dates of his ministrations: a station called Geiger’s, in 1759; Charlottenburg, in 1769; Morris County, Long Pond, and Mount Hope, in 1776; Sussex County, Ringwood, and Hunterdon County, in 1785. The chief congregation at this period was at a place called Macoupin (now in Passaic County), about fifteen miles from the present city of Paterson. It was settled in the middle of the last century by Germans, who were brought over to labor in the iron mines and works in this part of the province. Two families from Baden among the colonists were Catholics; and the first priest who visited them is said to have been a Mr. Langrey from Ireland. Mount Hope, not far from Macoupin, used to be visited by Father Farmer twice a year, and by other priests, as occasion might require, from Philadelphia. Except the Catholics in the northern parts, there were very few scattered about New Jersey before the American Revolution. The schoolmaster at Mount Holly in 1762 was an Irish Catholic named Thomas McCurtain, and one of his descendants is the distinguished scholar and antiquarian, John G. Shea. The Catholics in these colonies before American Independence were subject in spiritual matters to the Bishop (vicar-apostolic) of London, who used to appoint a vicar-general (the superior of the Jesuits in Maryland) to supply his place. After the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773, the vicar-general. Father John Lewis, was the late superior of the order in this country. The visits of the missionaries to New Jersey seem to have been interrupted during the Revolutionary War; but a number of very distinguished foreign Catholics serving in our army honored the land by their presence in such a cause. Among them we find Lafayette, Chevalier Massillon, De Kalb, Pulaski, Kosciusko, and Mauduit du Plessis, the engineer officer who fortified Fort Mercer, at Red Bank on the Delaware, with so much skill that the attacking Hessians were thoroughly repulsed. In the months of August and September, 1781, the French troops under De Rochambeau marched diagonally across the State from Sufferns (just over line) in New York, by way of Pompton, Whippany, Byram’s Tavern, Somerville, Princeton, and Trenton. An army chaplain, the Abbé Robin, published a little book in 1782, describing this French expedition from New Port to York-town; but, regrettably, he gives his readers not a word about any Catholics that he may have met or heard of in New Jersey.

After the evacuation of New York by the British in 1783, there was a prospect of collecting the few scattered Catholics on Manhattan Island into a congregation, and the venerable Father Farmer used to go twice a year to visit the faithful there, across the northern part of this State, stopping on his way to officiate at Macoupin. On the 22d of September, 1785, the Rev. John Carroll, who had been appointed by the Pope superior of the church in the United States and empowered to give Confirmation, set out on a tour to administer this sacrament at Philadelphia, New York, and (as he writes to a friend) “in the upper counties of the Jerseys and Pennsylvania, where our worthy German brethren had formed congregations.” In this year Rev. Mr. Carroll computed the number of Catholics under his charge at sixteen thousand in Maryland, seven thousand in Pennsylvania, and two thousand scattered about the other States. The number of priests was nineteen in Maryland and five in Pennsylvania. We learn how small was the grain of mustard-seed of the church in this part of the world less than a hundred years ago, when we see that there was no resident priest at that time between Canada and Pennsylvania; and it used to be said contemptuously (so Watson has it in his Annals): “John Leary goes once a year to Philadelphia to get absolution.” This worthy man therefore, who was certainly living in New York in 1774, had to leave that city and cross the whole of New Jersey before he could perform his Easter duties. The earlier editions of Catholic books printed in the United States were generally gotten up by subscription, and a perusal of the lists of subscribers is interesting, as giving some idea of the number, zeal, and original nationality (conjectured from the form of patronymic) of the Catholics at the time. Thus, to the first Catholic Bible published in the United States, at Philadelphia in 1790, only six out of the four hundred and twenty-seven subscribers were from New Jersey. These are Joseph Bloomfield, Attorney-General of the State; James Craft and R. S. Jones, Burlington; John Holmes, Cape May; Alexander Kenney, near (New) Brunswick; and Maurice Moynihan, Atsion; but in considering this, the most interesting to us of any lists of subscribers to early Catholic books, we must remember that the names are not all of Catholics; and of these six from New Jersey the last three only are considered orthodox by Archbishop Bayley in his appendix to the History of the Catholic Church in New York (2d ed.)

The massacre of 1793 in the Island of Hayti drove a number of French Catholics to the United States, some of whom settled at Mount Holly, Elizabethtown, and other parts of the State, but we do not know that they did anything for the church. Catholic advance was to come from quite another immigration. In 1805, or earlier, the Rev. John Tisserant, one of the French clergy driven from home by the Revolution, was living at Elizabethtown. He was an excellent man, and may be considered the first resident priest in New Jersey, although he cannot be said to have been stationed here by authority. He returned to Europe in June, 1806. The minister of the Presbyterian church at Whippany (Morris County) from 1791 to 1795 was Calvin White. “His ministry, though brief, was useful,” says the historian. He afterwards connected himself with the Episcopalians, and finally became a Catholic. A conversion of this kind at that period was sufficiently remarkable, we think, to be mentioned in notes on the Catholic Church in New Jersey.

In the year 1808, the dioceses of New York and Philadelphia were erected, with the northern part of New Jersey within the former and the southern within the latter diocese. This arrangement continued until 1853; and while it lasted religion made some progress here, but slowly. The Rev. Richard Bulger, a native of Kilkenny, Ireland, having come to the American Mission, was ordained priest by Bishop Connolly of New York, in 1820. He was assistant at the cathedral in New York, and thence regularly attended Paterson, where he devoted himself to the Catholics gathered in that manufacturing town, and scattered about the upper part of the State. The church at Paterson is mentioned in the Almanac of 1822; it being then the only one in New Jersey. The pastor was exposed to inconvenience, insults, and hardship. One evening, for instance, a bigoted ruffian threw a large jagged stone into his lighted room, the shutters or window-blinds having been left unclosed, and he had a narrow escape from a hole in his head. On another occasion he was rudely turned out on to the muddy road with his Breviary and bundle from a country cart, the driver of which had given him a lift until he discovered that he was a priest. The account, however, says that it was the farmer’s wife who “declared that he should not remain in the wagon”; and the man afterwards applied to Father Bulger for instruction, and was received into the church, but we do not hear of the conversion of the scold—perhaps because (as an old poet says)

About 1825, that part of New Jersey under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Philadelphia used to be visited occasionally by clergymen from beyond the Delaware, and stations were established at Pleasant Mills and Trenton, which continued to be served, but without resident pastors (we believe), until the diocese of Newark was erected. The city of Newark had a pastor about 1830 in the person of Rev. Gregory Pardow, who was in 1834 the only priest actually residing in New Jersey. After this period churches were erected not only in the principal city, Newark, but also in Jersey City, Perth Amboy, Belleville, Madison, New Brunswick, Elizabethtown, Macoupin, and other centres of population. The church at Macoupin was erected in 1841 by Father John Raffeiner, a native of the Tyrol, who came to this country in 1833, and used to visit the Germans scattered through New Jersey; and in 1842 a church in Newark for the German Catholics was erected by Father Balleis, a Benedictine monk. On the 30th of October, 1853, the Rt. Rev. J. R. Bayley, at the time a priest in New York, was consecrated first bishop of Newark, the diocese being coextensive with the State; and, on his taking possession of his see, found thirty-three churches and thirty clergymen. Since then the advance of the Catholic religion here has been rapid; and when Bishop Bayley was transferred to Baltimore, he left to his successor what is considered, we believe, one of the completest dioceses in the United States—a disciplined clergy, religious orders of both sexes, diocesan seminary, college for higher education, academy for young ladies, select and parochial schools, orphan asylums, hospitals, cemeteries, and other Christian institutions, in a flourishing condition. The progress of the church during these latter years has been before the eyes of all; and as we have intended to limit ourselves to the period anterior to the erection of New Jersey into a diocese, in making notes on Catholicity in the State, we now end them, if even a little abruptly.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Manual of the Blessed Sacrament. Translated from the French of Rev. T. B. Boone, S.J., by Mrs. Annie Blount Storrs. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1875. 18mo, pp. 509.

The publication of this manual supplies a real want which many devout persons have felt, and which they will now find fully satisfied. It is a companion for the altar, a treasure of pious reading, of meditation and prayers, for Mass, Communion, Visits to the Blessed Sacrament, Confraternities, and days of special devotion, such as Corpus Christi and the Forty Hours’ Adoration. It is translated from the French by an accomplished lady well fitted for the task, and has been carefully examined and corrected by several clergymen of New York who are distinguished for their learning and piety. The approbation of the Cardinal is the best proof of the excellence of the work, for, apart from the authoritative character of his sanction, no one is better able to appreciate a work of this kind, or to judge of its merits, than His Eminence; and we are assured that he has not simply contented himself with the examination requisite to make sure that this manual is orthodox in doctrine, and therefore fit for publication, but has warmly interested himself in its translation and preparation for the press, on account of his high estimate of its value. In Belgium, where devotion to the Blessed Sacrament especially flourishes, it is the favorite book of its kind. The treatise on frequent communion is especially thorough and important; and there is one, also, on the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus—a devotion so intimately connected with that of the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. We need not add, after this, that we recommend the manual in a special manner to religious communities, and to the faithful generally. We trust that their own personal experience of the benefit and consolation to be derived from its use will secure their cordial assent to the praise we have bestowed upon it, and that it will become as popular here as it is in Belgium.

The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ. By Louis Veuillot. Translated into English by the Rev. Anthony Farley. From the Seventh French Edition. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1875.

At last we welcome in English a work published eleven years ago. Written in answer to Renan, “It is truly,” says the translator, “what our Holy Father Pius IX. calls it, ‘A vindication of the outraged Godhead of Christ.’” The letter of the Holy Father is prefixed to the table of contents.

We transcribe what the translator says in apology for reproducing the work at this late hour:

“Appearing as it does some time after the existence of the original work, it might seem that the object of the book had ceased to be, had been forgotten, or was of no moment to the public of our day and of our country. But when we remember the deep impression produced by Renan’s work—an impression stamped (it would seem indelibly) upon the religious literature and religious teaching of our times—we have to admit that a vindication of Christ, the God-Man, is as necessary to-day as it was when the new Voltaire appeared to shock religious sentiment in France and in the world. ‘Christus heri et hodie,’ is the war-cry of the foes, just as much as the trust and comfort of the faithful lovers of the God-Man.”

Next comes Louis Veuillot’s preface, which should be read with more attention than is generally accorded to prefaces. Indeed, we think few who begin to read it will hesitate to go through. The author reminds us that himself was once a sceptic; and throws a light upon the unbelieving mind—upon the cause and nature of unbelief—which only such a man with such an experience can throw.

His aim in writing Our Lord’s life is to show the overwhelming force of the simple Gospel story. He contends (and we are sure he is right) that, while the “deniers and falsifiers of the truth have been admirably refuted in every objection raised by them,” yet, “since their supreme art lies in feigning and producing ignorance, the essential point should be to reply especially to what they do not say. This is what we unavoidably forget” (pp. 17, 18). Then, referring to Renan, he continues: