Volume 25 — THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XXV., No. 146.—MAY, 1877.

THE PRUSSIAN CHANCELLOR.^[26]

M. Julian Klaczko is by birth a Polish Jew and is a convert to the Catholic Christian faith. He was for a time employed in the office of the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and was afterwards a member of the imperial parliament. He has, however, generally been a resident in France, where his numerous essays on political topics have been published, all of which have attracted much attention and won for their author a high reputation. We have already, in our number for last March, made some observations on the career and policy of one of the two chancellors, whose lives and public actions, so far as they had progressed at the time of its publication, were sketched in the work whose title is given below. This work is one of the most interesting political brochures of our time, and we propose to continue in the present article the review of it commenced in our previous one, confining our attention chiefly to the chancellor of the German Empire.

Prince Bismarck has been characterized by M. Thiers as “a savage full of genius.” He is one of Carlyle’s “heroes”—an expression synonymous with that of the clever French statesman, and denoting a giant in whom is embodied intellectual and physical force, irrespective of any moral direction. To this native strength, which has remained through life to a great extent rude and uncultivated, and not in any way to a regular and careful education, Otto von Bismarck is indebted for the success he has achieved. His studies were finished on his entrance at the university, and never resumed. It is doubtful whether he ever passed the legal examination required before entering the civil service in Prussia. Nevertheless, such a man is always a sort of extraordinary professor to himself. He has read literature and studied men and events. It is absurd to call such a man uneducated; and, although he does not possess the art of speaking 146or writing according to rule, he is able to use both his tongue and pen with an original power which sometimes rises to the highest level of eloquence, and to coin expressions which, once uttered, can never be forgotten. We have quoted one in our former article, about the “iron dice of destiny,” and we will give one more, which we think is unsurpassed in the annals of modern speech:

“One of his most happy, most memorable inspirations he suddenly drew one day from the libretto of the Freischütz.

“In this opera of Weber, Max, the good and unfortunate hunter, borrows a cartridge from Robin, the evil spirit, and immediately kills an eagle, one of whose feathers he proudly sticks in his cap. He then asks for some more cartridges, but Robin tells him that they are 'enchanted balls,’ and that, in order to obtain them, he must surrender himself to the infernal spirits and deliver his soul to them. Max draws back, and then Robin, sneering, tells him that he hesitates in vain, that the bargain is made, and that he has already committed himself by the ball he made use of: 'Do you think, then, that this eagle was a free gift?’ Well! when in 1849 the young orator of the Mark of Brandenburg had to implore the Prussian chamber not to accept for the King of Prussia the imperial crown which the parliament of Frankfort offered him, he ended by crying out: 'It is radicalism which offers this gift to the king. Sooner or later this radicalism will stand upright before the king, will demand of him its recompense, and, pointing to the emblem of the eagle on that new imperial flag, it will say: Did you think, then, that this eagle was a free gift?’”

The suggestion will doubtless present itself immediately to the minds of many of our readers that the poetic myth of the Freischütz is likely to be fulfilled in sober, actual reality when the German imperial drama is played out, and that Bismarck will prove to have been the Robin of William I. But this is an anticipation, and we return to our sheep and our young wolf. An equally marked and well-known trait of Bismarck’s style in speech and writing is a cold, biting, ironical humor, which often assumes the outward guise of frankness, sometimes ferocious, sometimes farcical, but always dangerous and often deadly when the master of the weapon is wielding it in a real fight. The general tone of his disposition is contemptuous and misanthropical, as of one who alternately sneers and laughs at mankind in general, on the whole despising the game of life, yet going in for deep play with all his soul when the chance presents itself, for mere occupation and amusement; just as he plunged into the Burschen-life in his youth and hunted bears at a later period in Russia. There is no trace of philanthropy in his character; as an enemy he is relentless, and no gentle or noble sentiments hamper his progress in the way of his policy of “blood and iron.” Yet there is a most tender and devoted affection manifested in his letters to his sister, Malvina von Arnim—“Maldewinchen”; so far as we know he has been a kind husband and father; there seems really to be something genuine in his long friendship for Prince Gortchakoff; and all the world knows that he risked his life to rescue a servant from drowning. The impression we have received from all we have ever read or heard about him is, that his natural disposition, like that of Napoleon, is generous and noble, but, like his, has been perverted by ambition.

His early life did not promise any great achievements. He went by the name of “Mad Bismarck,” and was always restless, unsettled, without steady application to any definite aim. What his real inward convictions are or have been, in religion, 147philosophy, and the higher sphere of political ethics, is very difficult to determine, at least for us who are at a distance; or even to decide how far he has ever formed and cherished any deep and settled convictions at all. Practically, he has been a Pyrrhonist and Epicurean, a heathen and a materialist, using all things and all ideas as so many counters of no value except for his own game. The opinions which he professed at the outset of his political career were those of “the party of the cross,” that old-Prussian, religious, monarchical, conservative party represented by the illustrious Baron von Gerlach, which has been in opposition to the administration of the chancellor, and is now in a quasi-alliance with the Catholic party.

“'I belong—' such was the defiant declaration of Herr von Bismarck in one of his first speeches in the chamber—'I belong to an opinion which glories in the reproaches of obscurantism and of tendencies of the middle age; I belong to that great multitude which is compared with disdain to the most intelligent party of the nation.’ He wanted a Christian state. 'Without a religious basis,’ said he, 'a state is nothing but a fortuitous aggregation of interests, a sort of bastion in a war of all against all; without this religious basis, all legislation, instead of regenerating itself at the living sources of eternal truth, is only tossed about by human ideas as vague as changeable.’”

What can be finer or truer than this statement, in which the whole of his own policy as chancellor of the German Empire is condemned in advance out of his own mouth? In every important respect his avowed opinions and political action were diametrically opposite to those of a later date. In fact, his bold and even extravagant advocacy of the cause of the house of Hapsburg, at a moment when (1850) the attitude of Prussia towards Austria was most humiliating, was the first occasion of launching him into the career of foreign affairs. He was sent, with much misgiving on the part of the king and his minister, as Prussian plenipotentiary to the Diet of Frankfort; and here he began to go to school to Prince Gortchakoff, now commenced that world-renowned friendship between these two statesmen which has altered the course of history and for whose dénoûement we are at this moment intently watching.

It would be idle to suppose that these two men traced out beforehand the common policy which they have since pursued in concert. It was impossible for any human sagacity to foresee the conjunctures which have since arisen, and have furnished to Bismarck the opportunities of which his genius has availed itself to destroy and to upbuild great political fabrics. They could only plan, in general, the aggrandizement of Russia and Prussia, by the breaking down of the traditional policy of coalition and balance among the European powers. All that we can see clearly respecting the incipient working of Bismarck’s mind at this period is, that he contracted an aversion for Austria, a contempt for the German confederation, and a mean opinion in general of the diplomats who had the management of the European state-craft. The idea of a new era of absolutism in a few great, conquering nations—an absolutism “tinged with popular passions,” or, according to his favorite expression,“spotted with red”—dawned on his mind and became gradually more distinct. Some extravagant projects were at times bubbling in his restless brain, and he often threatened to abandon the 148career of regular diplomatic service and go into politics “in his swimming-drawers.” But when the Prussian administration proposed to him to go to Russia as resident ambassador, with a view, as he expressed it, of “putting him on ice” to cool him down, he consented to don a “bear-skin” instead of the aforesaid habiliments of a sans-culottes.

On the 1st of April, his birth-day, 1859, Herr von Bismarck arrived in the capital of the Russian Empire, of which his former colleague at Frankfort was already the chancellor. Among the Russians he was extremely popular; for he took extraordinary pains to make himself agreeable to them, and seemed to have turned himself into a Russian, for the time being, in donning the bear-skin. Notwithstanding his outward hilariousness, he was inwardly morose, dissatisfied with the course which Prussian and European politics were following, and feeling himself condemned to honorable exile and inaction. He was once so severely ill through chagrin that his life was in danger. He said on his recovery that he had gone “half-way to a better world,” and expressed regret that he had not completed the journey. He thought of abandoning politics altogether, and with difficulty overcame his impatience sufficiently to bide his time a little longer. Gortchakoff said that Russia “did not sulk, but meditated.” Bismarck sulked and meditated. But meanwhile the course of events was preparing for him his opportunity. The strange and mixed drama in which Napoleon III., destined to be its principal victim, was the chief actor—whose critical moments were Sebastopol, Solferino, Sadowa, Sedan—was going on. This great actor, once regarded as a sphinx of political wisdom, but now designated by no more honorable title than the “dreamer of Ham,” holds a conspicuous place in the group of those apparently and temporarily great men to whom belongs the epitaph sadly composed for himself by the expiring Joseph II., Emperor of Austria: “Here lies the man who failed in all his undertakings.” More than this, he is a signal instance of that blind fatuity by which those men who set themselves to counteract the order of divine Providence are seduced, as the King of Israel was by the “lying spirit” in the mouth of his prophets, to ruin themselves and become the executioners of divine vengeance on their own persons.

If Louis Napoleon had had good sense and moral principle enough to imitate Charlemagne, he might have confirmed his dynasty, established France in solid power and prosperity, and earned true glory as a benefactor of Christendom. But he was not “of the seed of those men by whom salvation was brought to Israel.” He aspired to imitate Cæsar and Napoleon without possessing their genius. He imitated the profligacy of Cæsar in his youth, the perfidy of Napoleon in his old age. His early vices avenged themselves in the pain and disease which unmanned and incapacitated him for action in the last eventful crisis of his career. His criminal alliance with Carbonari and conspirators in his youth entangled him afterwards in a mesh which he had not courage, even if he had the wish, to break. By his alliance with the Turk he prepared an enemy in Russia, who became one principal cause of his final downfall and the humiliation of 149France, while he gained nothing beyond a momentary prestige of glory for his army. By his Italian campaign, and his subsequent support of Prussia against Austria, he weakened the power which would otherwise have befriended France in her dire distress; and he built up a kingdom which abandoned and betrayed him, at the cost of incurring the malediction which falls on all betrayers and oppressors of the Holy See.

By his greed of territory in annexing Savoy he alienated for ever his former ally, England. By the war above alluded to and his miserable Mexican fiasco he used up the splendid army of France, and was found minus habens when the day of destiny came on him unprepared. He deliberately fostered the military and political increase of Prussia, and then madly dragged down upon France that terrible power which, having first outwitted, in the second place crushed him.

We have read of some one who drew an enigmatical figure, in which a crowned serpent is represented twining from his tail upward through a combination of four letters S, and strangled by the upper crook of the topmost letter. In this figure is strikingly symbolized the course of events in Europe from the Crimean war to the Prussian conquest. During Bismarck’s residence in Russia, which followed Sebastopol, came the day of Solferino. The immediate effect of this battle was an attempt to mobilize the Prussian army, which disclosed to the crown-prince, now Emperor of Germany, its miserable condition, and suggested to him the plan of its entire reformation. This plan he afterwards carried out, accomplishing it with unprecedented rapidity and skill by the aid of Von Moltke and Von Roon, against the violent opposition of the parliament and the whole people. Thus was Bismarck’s great instrument of making force bring right under subjection prepared for him in advance, without his concurrence. The connivance and concurrence of Russia were already secured, most cordially so far as further designs on Austria were concerned, and at least conditionally and passively in respect to ulterior projects of improving Prussia’s position.

The “Iron Count” is now about to try the strength of his Thor’s hammer on the head of the sphinx. Bismarck is about to become the head of the Prussian state, and try his craft and strength in a contest for supremacy with Louis Napoleon. He was called home toward the end of 1861 for consultation and to assist at the coronation of King William, and returned to St. Petersburg only to close up the affairs of his mission and take farewell. In May, 1862, he was at Berlin, and evidently destined for the post of Chief Minister. He was, however, ad interim sent on the mission to Paris, to take the measure of Louis Napoleon and study more nearly the position of European affairs, which all centred at that time in the Tuileries. We should rather say that he went to Paris to complete these studies and observations. Already, in 1858, he had sounded the French emperor in respect to his sentiments towards Prussia, and found them most encouraging. During the same year Louis Napoleon had sent this singular message by Count Pepoli to the court of Berlin: “In Germany Austria represents the past, Prussia represents the future; in linking itself to Austria Prussia condemns itself to immobility; it cannot be thus contented; it is called to a 150higher fortune; it should accomplish in Germany the great destinies which await it, and which Germany awaits from it.” Consider this language, and then think of the prison of Wilhelmshöhe and of the reflections which must have passed through the mind of the unfortunate dreamer so rudely awakened by the thunder of Von Moltke’s guns! King William had had an interview with Louis Napoleon at Compiègne, for which Bismarck had aided him in preparing, and it was partly the result of this interview which had determined him to call the bold cavalier of the Mark to his side. The dreamer’s vague and scheming mind revolved vast projects of Pan-Latin, Pan-German, Pan-Sclavonian combinations, uniting the three great races and the three great churches, with their respective centres at Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, in a triple alliance of universal monarchies, to dominate the world, to inaugurate a new era, to bring on the millennium of civilization, and to place the name of Louis Napoleon at least on a par with those of Moses, Alexander, Julius Cæsar, Constantine, and Charlemagne.

We have read in the autobiography of some German philosopher that in his youth he was ravished with ecstasy in thinking of “the wheels of the eternal essences”! The visionary projects of this unfortunate imperial seer remind us forcibly of this boyish philosopher. While he was letting France drift on towards the Où allons nous? of Mgr. Dupanloup, he was driving his imaginary chariot, on the “wheels of the eternal essences,” through airy regions, casting an occasional undecided glance on Belgium and the frontiers of the Rhine. Bismarck was not long in taking his measure, and it appears that Prince Gortchakoff had long since learned the passes by which he could magnetize him at pleasure. With his own peculiar, knavish frankness, Bismarck avowed his own objective aim—the rectification of the Prussian frontiers—and found it easy to amuse the decaying emperor with vague hints of compensation to France by allowing the annexation of Belgium and the territory on the left bank of the Rhine. As for the opinion which was formed respecting Bismarck himself, at this time and during the first period of his administration, by the emperor and the diplomats, it appears now strangely comical. They could not bring themselves to regard him as serious, and were thrown completely off their guard by his consummate acting. As late as 1865, when he visited the French emperor at Biarritz, the latter, while listening to his harangues during the promenades which they took together on the beach, would slyly press the arm of Prosper Merimée, and even whispered once in his ear: “He is crazy.” M. Benedetti in the following year told General Govone that he considered Bismarck to be “a maniacal diplomat,” adding that he had long known his man, and had followed him up for fifteen years. There is something grimly amusing in this play of the cat and the mice, notwithstanding its tragical results and the pity we must feel for the victims who thought themselves so extremely astute, but were lured on by one deeper in craft than they were, as easily as the meditative, solemn bruin was enticed by Reynard the fox to go after honey.

Bismarck left Paris, convinced of three things as the result of his studies: First, that Louis Napoleon was a “great unrecognized incapacity.” 151Second, that “liberalism is only nonsense which it is easy to bring to reason; but revolution is a force which it is necessary to know how to use.” Third, “that England need not enter into his calculations.” He returned to Berlin to assume the office of Minister of Foreign Affairs and commence the work of rounding off Prussia. Austria was the one decided antagonist whom he had to meet in the critical struggle for supremacy in Germany. He was not afraid of her single power unaided by allies, but he was anxious to make doubly sure of the neutrality of France and Russia. Circumstances favored him most remarkably in producing an alienation between these two powers, which was an efficacious preventive of any amicable concord between the two to check his plans, and in persuading each one more decisively to connive at them. The Polish insurrection, encouraged by France and Austria, embroiled Alexander II. with Louis Napoleon, and renewed all the former rancor of St. Petersburg against Vienna. Bismarck was cunning enough to make secret preparations for taking advantage of the insurrection, if it proved too strong for Russia to quell, by occupying Poland with Prussian troops, and securing the final disposition of the whole Polish question for himself. At the same time he so managed as to strengthen the bond between himself and Gortchakoff, and, in the actual event, to bind Russia and Prussia closely together by an open common policy in respect to Poland. Favored by fortunate circumstances, by the co-operation of military chiefs who showed a genius in organizing and leading the Prussian army which astonished the world, by a fatuity in Louis Napoleon and a complaisance in the Russian chancellor beyond his most sanguine expectations, he played during the next four years, like a Paul Morphy of politics, four or five games at once with masterly skill. King William of Prussia and all the other rulers and statesmen of Europe were but pieces or pawns to be played with, taken, or checkmated; and on the day after the battle of Sadowa he was really master of the situation.

The objective point at which Bismarck aimed in the year 1862 was to make Prussia the most powerful state in Europe and completely independent of every other state or coalition of states. For this end it was necessary to destroy the German Bund, to deprive Austria of all power in Germany, to increase the Prussian territory, and to establish its hegemony in Germany. All this was accomplished, before the close of the year 1866, by means of the imbroglio of the Schleswig-Holstein succession. When Christian IX. succeeded to the throne of Denmark, his right to the succession in the duchies was disputed, because it came through a female line debarred from inheriting by the ancient law of Schleswig and Holstein. The designs of Prussia upon these duchies were, however, of a much earlier origin, and had their birth from the liberal party and its revolutionary movements in 1848. In a speech delivered in the Prussian chambers, April 21, 1849, Herr von Bismarck declared that the war provoked in the duchies of the Elbe was “an undertaking eminently iniquitous, frivolous, disastrous, and revolutionary.” We will not pretend to determine the question of the validity of King Christian’s title, as between 152himself and the people of the duchies. It is evident enough, however, that the matter was one which interested all Europe, and ought to have been calmly, justly determined, in a manner consonant with the interests of the kingdom of Denmark, of the people of the duchies, of the confederated states of the German Bund, and of Europe. In fact, the doubt respecting Christian’s title was seized upon by Bismarck as a mere pretext for absorbing the disputed territory, with its fine Baltic sea-port of Kiel, into Prussia. The Prince of Augustenberg, the chief claimant against Christian, had been induced, a short time before the accession of the latter to the Danish throne, by the influence of Bismarck himself, to sell his claim on Holstein to the government of Copenhagen. No sooner was the old king dead than Bismarck declared that this same prince was the rightful duke. At a later period he brought forward several other claimants, that these rival claims might neutralize each other. How he cheated Lord John Russell; how he used the German Bund as a tool for his own purposes and then scornfully pushed it aside; how he drew Austria into a war against Denmark, followed by a joint occupation of the duchies, and then commenced a quarrel against her for their sole possession; and how England, the declared protector of Denmark, looked tamely on while it was despoiled and maimed, we have not time to relate in detail. It was a great blunder in France, England, and Russia to permit what they could easily have prevented. On the part of Austria it was a stupendous and suicidal folly to make itself an accomplice in a conspiracy for destroying the bulwarks of its own power. This was soon made manifest, but too late to escape the consequences of a fatal blunder. Prussia being ready for action, the Bund and the claimants of the duchies were summarily shoved aside. The question of the right of succession in the duchies was referred to a high Prussian court for adjudication. It was decided that the King of Denmark alone had possessed the right of sovereignty in Schleswig and Holstein, and that, by the cession which he had been forced to make after being conquered in war, this right was now vested in Prussia and Austria. Austria was politely requested to sell her share to Prussia, which she declined to do, and the next step was to wrest it from her by force.

The dark intrigues—at the time so hidden from sight and so almost desperate, even in the view of the “maniacal diplomat” who held their threads in his hand and wove them into a mesh around his victim—by which Bismarck planned the ruin of Austria, have since been fully disclosed. With the government of Victor Emanuel a strict and secret treaty was contracted. At the same time, and for several years after, a correspondence was kept up with Mazzini, looking to the overthrow of Victor Emanuel in case of any action on his part unfavorable to the schemes of the arch-conspirators. Arrangements were made for fomenting an insurrection in Hungary under the leadership of Garibaldi. The neutrality and connivance of Louis Napoleon were secured by playing upon his Italian sympathies and holding before him vague expectations of compensation for France.

Prince Gortchakoff lent an underhand but most valuable help to his friend all through, beginning 153with the attack on Denmark. It was Louis Napoleon, whose incapacity and weakness were not yet fully revealed even to Bismarck’s keen eye, who was most feared and distrusted. Enfeebled as he was in respect to whatever capacity he had really possessed in his prime, and weakened as was the power of France, yet, with the help of the statesmen and soldiers who were at his disposal, he still retained the power of determining the main issue in the politics of Europe, and Bismarck knew it. He would not stir in any decisive action until well assured that he had mastered the French emperor by his superior craft. He had less difficulty in this than he anticipated. Louis Napoleon, like most other European observers, overrated the military strength of Austria, and underrated the new Prussian army with its almost untried leaders, Von Roon and Von Moltke; which even Bismarck himself somewhat distrusted up to the last moment. The French emperor desired and hoped for the liberation of Venetia. But he expected the defeat of the Prussian army in Germany, and for himself the rôle of a mediator, an umpire, a general referee for settling all things on the basis of a new treaty of peace. He let Bismarck play his game out, with what result is known to the world. Although victorious in Italy, Austria nevertheless ceded Venetia to Louis Napoleon, who handed it over to Victor Emanuel. The victory of Sadowa agreeably surprised the victor, brought despair to the vanquished, and astonished the world. If all the other great powers had not been alienated from each other, and under a fatal spell of the arch-fiend, Robin’s master, whose enchanted balls had brought down the Austrian eagle, they might have intervened to prevent the grave ulterior consequences of this fatal day of Sadowa. If Louis Napoleon had not been paralyzed and demoralized to the extent of utter imbecility, he might have interfered alone, and successfully, in this his last opportunity for saving his dynasty and saving France. Nobody interfered. There was a weak show of negotiations, but Bismarck had his own way in everything. Before the end of the year 1866 his spoils were all gathered in and safely garnered, and the centre was shifted from Paris to Berlin.

The area of Prussia had been increased, by the annexation of Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau, Frankfort, and the duchies of the Elbe, from 108,000 to 135,000 English square miles, and its population from 19,000,000 to 23,000,000. It was, moreover, the head of a North German Confederation, and practically had control of the South German States, with the certainty of having all Germany outside of Austria to co-operate with it and follow its lead in case of hostilities with France. These were the “moral conquests of Prussia in Germany” which the king, as prince-regent, had announced to the nation when he assumed the reins of government. This was the fulfilment of “the federal obligations toward the Emperor Francis Joseph,” so much talked of at Potsdam, while the future chancellor was hunting bears in Russia. Such was the sequel of the protest of Berlin against the Piedmontese annexation. The prophecy of Cavour was fulfilled: that “Prussia would one day, thanks to Piedmont, profit by the example which had been given to it.”

The “Piedmontese mission of Prussia,” vaunted by the French 154democratic press, was well inaugurated and pretty near fulfilment. Louis Napoleon’s oracular sayings about the “great destinies of Prussia” proved to have something else in them than “the stuff which dreams are made of.” He had no longer to utter the philanthropic complaint: “The geographical position of Prussia is badly defined.” It was perhaps not quite perfect in the opinion of Bismarck, but it was certainly vastly improved, and destined to a still further rectification which had probably not been revealed to the imperial dreamer.

Having disposed of his first accomplice in the great scheme, gradually matured during his sulky meditations at Frankfort and St. Petersburg under the tuition of his master in diplomacy, Prince Gortchakoff—namely, having put down Austria—Bismarck proceeded with his next plot: against his accomplice in the one just successfully carried into execution. Austria had been lured on by the expectation of sharing in the spoliation of Denmark, defrauded of her portion of the spoils, and stripped of a great part of her original possessions, to the advantage of Prussia. In like manner Louis Napoleon was disappointed of the acquisitions he hoped to receive as a reward for conniving at the spoliation of Austria; he and his dynasty were overthrown completely, and we trust finally; France was humiliated to the dust and compelled to ransom herself from captivity by the price of her treasure and her territory. The disruption of the European bond left France, as Austria had been left, at the mercy of her perfidious ally, converted into an open and relentless enemy.

During the preliminaries of peace at Nikolsburg, afterwards ratified by the treaty of Prague, by which the German hegemony of Prussia was established, Bismarck persuaded the French emperor through his envoy, the unfortunate M. Benedetti—the same one who knew his man and followed him up so skilfully—that “the reverses of Austria allowed France and Prussia to modify their territorial situation.” Hints were thrown out about the Rhine provinces and Belgium. After Prussia had completed her own modification of her territorial situation for the time being, Bismarck continued, while Prussia was taking a rest and making all her political and military arrangements perfect, what he called his “dilatory negotiations” with Louis Napoleon. The latter was asking for compensations, for which he had not stipulated when he placed his services at the disposal of his employer. Mephistopheles qualified this demand as a “policy of pour boire.” You engage a fiacre in Paris, you pay the stipulated price to the driver, and he presents his hand again, unless you anticipate him by a voluntary gratuity, with the familiar phrase: “Pour boire, monsieur, s’il vous plaît!” If you are a good-humored gentleman, you hand over a few sous and he departs contented. If you are gruff and parsimonious, and show unwillingness to comply with his polite request, he will reiterate it with less deference and civility. Whereupon, if you are violent and profane, and have sufficient command of the French language to speak after the manner of the gamins de Paris, you refer him to a person beyond the “Porte de l’Enfer.” The history of the secret treaty of offensive and defensive alliance between France and Prussia, giving the aid of France to carry out the further programme of Prussian 155ascendency in Germany, and the aid of Prussia to secure Luxembourg and Belgium to France, signed by France, though not signed, only laid up in her archives, by Prussia, is well known. A previous project of a treaty ceding the Rhine provinces to France was shown to the South German plenipotentiaries and drove them into a secret and strict alliance with Prussia. The work of Nikolsburg and Prague was completed, the whole military force of North and South Germany was at the disposal of King William, and nothing was wanting but a war with France to make him emperor of Germany, with Alsace and Lorraine as additional provinces of his kingdom, and all expenses paid by the French treasury. Bismarck could now drop the mask whenever he pleased, and bully the unfortunate emperor into the folly of trying to expiate his past misconduct by baptizing himself in the fire of Prussian artillery and mitraille. This dark and tragic act in the drama of the Downfall of Europe is summed up with consummate truth and terseness in that little masterpiece entitled The Fight in Dame Europa’s School: showing how the German boy thrashed the French boy, and how the English boy looked on:

“Only one boy—his favorite fag—did William take into his confidence in the matter. This was a sharp, shrewd lad named Mark, not over-scrupulous in what he did, full of deep tricks and dodges, and so cunning that the old dame herself, though she had the eyes of a hawk, could never catch him out in anything absolutely wrong. To this smart youth William one day whispered his desires [of annexing part of Louis’ garden] as they sat together in the summer house smoking and drinking beer. 'There is only one way to do it,’ said Mark. 'If you want the flower-beds, you must fight Louis for them, and I believe you will lick him all to smash. You see, old fellow, you have grown so much lately, and filled out so wonderfully, that you are really getting quite formidable. Why, I recollect the time when you were quite a little chap!’ 'Yes,’ said William, turning up his eyes devoutly, 'it has pleased Providence that I should be stout. Then, my dear Mark, what do you advise me to do?’ 'Ah! that is not so easy to say. Give me time to think, and when I have an idea I will let you know. Only, whatever you do, take care to put Master Louis in the wrong. Don’t pick a quarrel with him, but force him, by quietly provoking him, to pick a quarrel with you. Give out that you are still peaceably disposed, and carry your Testament about as usual. That will put old Dame Europa off her guard, and she will believe in you as much as ever. The rest you may leave to me.’ An opportunity of putting their little plot into execution soon occurred. A garden became vacant on the other side of Louis’ little territory [Spain], which none of the boys seemed much inclined to accept. It was a troublesome piece of ground, exposed to constant attacks from the town-cads, who used to overrun it in the night and pull up the newly-planted flowers. 'Don’t you think,’ said Mark one day to his friend and patron, 'that your little cousin, the new boy [Prince Hohenzollern], might as well have that garden?’ 'I don’t see why he should not, if he wants it,’ replied William, by no means deep enough to understand what his faithful fag was driving at. 'It will be so nice for Louis, don’t you see, to have William to keep him in check on one side, and William’s little cousin to watch him on the other side,’ observed Mark innocently. 'Ah! to be sure,’ exclaimed William, beginning to wake up, 'so it will; very nice indeed. Mark, you are a sly dog.’ 'I should say, if you paid Louis the compliment to propose it, that it is such a delicate little attention as he would never forget—even if you withdrew the proposal afterwards.’ 'Just so, my boy; and then we shall have to fight.’ 'But look here, won’t the other chaps say that I provoked the quarrel?’ 'Not if we manage properly,’ was the reply. 'They are sure to fix the cause of dispute on Louis rather than on you. You are such a peaceable boy, you know; and he has always been fond of a shindy.’ So Dame Europa was asked to assign the vacant garden to 156William’s little cousin. 'Well,’ said she, 'if Louis does not object, who will be his nearest neighbor, he may have it.’ 'But I do object, ma’am,’ cried Louis. 'I very particularly object. I don’t want to be hemmed in on all sides by William and his cousins. They will be walking through my garden to pay each other visits, and perhaps throwing balls to one another right across my lawn.’ 'Oh! but you might be sure that I should do nothing unfair,’ said William reproachfully. 'I have never attacked anybody.’ 'That’s all my eye,’ said Louis. 'I don’t believe in your piety. Come, take your dear little relation off, and give him one of the snug corners that you bagged the other day from poor Christian.’ 'Come, come,’ interposed the Dame, 'I can’t listen to such angry words. You five monitors must settle the matter quietly among yourselves; but no fighting, mind. The day for that sort of thing is quite gone by.’ And the old lady toddled off and left the boys alone. 'I wouldn’t press it, Bill, if I were you,’ said John, in his deep, gruff voice, looking out of his shop-window on the other side of the water. 'I think it’s rather hard lines for Louis—I do indeed.’ 'Always ready to oblige you, my dear John,’ said William; and so the new boy’s claim to the garden was withdrawn. 'What shall I do now, Mark?’ asked William, turning to his friend. 'It seems to me that there is an end of it all.’ 'Not a bit,’ was the reply. 'Louis is still as savage as a bear. He’ll break out directly; you see if he don’t.’ 'I have been grossly insulted,’ began Louis at last, in a towering passion, 'and I shall not be satisfied unless William promises me never to make any such underhand attempts to get the better of me again.’ 'Tell him to be hanged,’ whispered Mark. 'You be—no,’ said William, recollecting himself, 'I never use bad language. My friend,’ he continued, 'I cannot promise you anything of the kind.’ 'Then I shall lick you till you do, you psalm-singing humbug!’ shouted Louis. 'Come on!’ said William, lifting up his hand as if to commend his cause to Heaven, and looking sanctimoniously out of the whites of his eyes. 'Come on!’ shouted William, thirsting for more blood. 'Vive la guerre!’ cried poor Louis, rushing blindly at his foe. Well and nobly he fought, but he could not stand his ground. Foot by foot and yard by yard he gave way, till at last he was forced to take refuge in his arbor, from the window of which he threw stones at his enemy to keep him back from following. And when William, who talked so big about his peaceable disposition, and declared that he only wanted to defend his 'fatherland,’ chased him right across the garden, trampled over beds and borders on his way, and then swore that he would break down his beautiful summer-house and bring Louis on his knees, everybody felt that the other monitors ought to interfere. But not a foot would they stir. Aleck looked on from a safe distance, wondering which of the combatants would be tired first. Joseph stood shaking in his shoes, not daring to say a word for fear William should turn round upon him and punch his head again; and John sat in his shop, grinding away at a new rudder and a pair of oars. 'Come and help a fellow, John,’ cried Louis in despair from his arbor. 'I don’t ask you to remember the days we have spent in here together when you have been sick of your own shop. But you might do something for me, now that I am in such a desperate fix and don’t know which way to turn.’ 'I am very sorry, Louis,’ said John, 'but what can I do? It is no pleasure to me to see you thrashed. On the contrary, it would pay me much better to have a near neighbor well off and cheerful than crushed and miserable. Why don’t you give in, Louis? It is of no mortal use to go on. He will make friends directly, if you will give back the two little strips of garden; and if you don’t, he will only smash your arbor to pieces, or keep you shut up there all dinner-time and starve you out. Give in, old fellow; there’s no disgrace in it. Everybody says how pluckily you have fought.’”

The ingenious author has made a mistake about Aleck and Joseph. Aleck was in league with William, and his threats alarmed Joseph and kept him from interfering. Bismarck had succeeded in reconciling Gortchakoff to the sacrifice of all the old friends and family connections of Russia in Germany. Moreover, he had in some way convinced him so completely that it was for the interest and future advantage 157of Russia to ally itself closely with Prussia, that he turned a deaf ear to the advances of France and Austria in reference to the Oriental question, and gave a strong moral support, which in case of need he was ready to transform into active military co-operation, to his most iniquitous and oppressive measures against France. M. Thiers was convinced of this when Prince Bismarck handed to him his Russian portfolio and allowed him to read at leisure thirty letters which it contained, while he sat by quietly smoking a cigar and enjoying the chagrin and discomfiture of the aged statesman. Besides this, we must consider that England had a reason for coolness towards France in the unprincipled negotiations of the French government respecting England’s protegée, Belgium. And at last, when England did wish to interfere to obtain for France more favorable conditions of peace, and made propositions for concerted action to St. Petersburg, it was Russia which threw cold water upon the plan and kept all Europe back while William was finishing up his quarrel with Louis. It cannot be doubted that Bismarck had given Gortchakoff to understand that, when the proper time came, Prussia would secure for Russia a fair field and no interference for a decisive and final effort to destroy the European empire of the Turk. Fuad-Pasha, said to have been one of the greatest statesmen of Turkey, while lying on his death-bed at Nice dictated a political testament, which was sent, after his mortal career had closed, to his sovereign, the sultan. In this document he had said: “When this writing is placed before the eyes of your majesty, I will no longer be in this world. You can, therefore, listen to me without distrust, and you should imbue yourself with this great and grievous truth: that the empire of the Osmanlis is in danger. An intestine dissension in Europe, and a Bismarck in Russia, and the face of the world will be changed.” The date of this document is January 3, 1869.

The conflict between Prince Bismarck and the Catholic Church has been treated of repeatedly in former articles in this magazine. We will, therefore, abstain from going over that ground again. It has been surmised that the policy of the Prussian chancellor in respect to the church has been dictated to him by the necessity of satisfying the demands of the radical-liberal party. We cannot think that it is to be accounted for simply on this ground. The general idea and fundamental principle of Bismarck has been to destroy the community of nations which was the remnant of ancient Christendom, and raise up an independent, self-subsisting, absolute, and dominating German Empire. It is an essential part of this plan to destroy the principle of unity and community centred in the Holy See, and to make the emperor absolute head of all churches within the boundaries of his state. The idea is wholly pagan and despotic, and includes the subversion of all right except that which is a conceded privilege derived from the sovereign will of the state. Not only, therefore, is all international right ignored by it, but every right of municipalities, of orders, of legislative and judicial bodies, of subordinate members of the government, of associations and individuals, is suppressed and merged in one paramount right of force, of physical power—in a word, of tyranny, the worst, as Plato long ago 158taught, of all possible political organisms.

In perfect harmony with the oppressive, persecuting policy of Prince Bismarck toward the church has been his conduct toward the Prussian nobility, the legislative chambers, and all those who have in any way asserted their rights against his despotic might. This is illustrated in the case of the Count Harry von Arnim.

We had intended to go more deeply into the merits of this affair than we now find our remaining space will permit. Catholics have little reason for cherishing amicable sentiments toward this unfortunate victim of a relentless persecution under the forms of law. He has been one of the most artful and persistent enemies of the Holy See among the statesmen of Europe. The pamphlet Pro Nihilo, on account of which, in great part, he was condemned of treason by a Prussian court, is sufficient, by itself, to show that if he had been in power he would have been more dangerous than even Bismarck. His cold contempt is more offensive to Catholic feelings than the violence of his successful rival. Nevertheless, there is in him more of honor, probity, veracity, and the courtesy of a gentleman than is at this day very common among diplomatists of the “new era.” Besides, he has been tricked, insulted, ill-used, and all but crushed in pieces by a cruel enemy, and therefore we cannot help sympathizing with him. There is something deeply tragic in his story. The gist of it lies in this: that he would not be a blind, subservient tool in the hands of the chief of the administration, that he dared to think for himself, and that the old Prussian nobility had fixed their hopes on him as a desirable successor to the chancellorship, in case anything happened to Prince Bismarck. Hence the long, perfidious, and in the end brutal warfare waged against him by his unscrupulous and relentless enemy, who has for the time being triumphed, according to his own maxim, La force prime le droit. The Count von Arnim is still, however, a formidable antagonist. With the pen, on the field of legal argument, in the subtle tactics of diplomatic writing, he is superior to his persecutor, and master of a force dangerous even to the man who can command armies. He has a host of friends and sympathizers in Prussia, of allies throughout Europe. M. Benedetti was not mistaken when he applied the epithet “maniacal” to the man who was called “mad” by the friends and boon companions of his youth. His madness is not without method, and, like that of Charles XII. of Sweden, has given him a certain prestige of heroism and success. On the day of Solferino that prestige sat on the helmet of Napoleon III. Sedan, Wilhelmshöhe, and Chiselhurst were still invisible in the future. The career of Bismarck is not yet finished, nor can the destiny which awaits the empire he created be foretold. It is reported that he has recently replied to those who asked him whether there would be war in Europe over the Eastern question: “The devil only knows!” He appears to regard his Satanic Majesty as the god of modern Europe and the supreme controlling power in modern politics. Formerly the name of God was frequently on his lips, and his thoughts spontaneously referred all things to him. It was God who decided battles and controlled the destinies of nations. Men of great 159genius cannot escape from their clear and vivid intuitions of the supersensible. One who has had the insight and the sentiment of the meanness of the world, and the sole grandeur of eternal principles of truth and morality, belonging to a mind naturally great, cannot be a complete dupe of the illusions by which he deceives and subdues the multitude. We can see this deep melancholy of a mind which cannot be satisfied with the trivialities of life, and is restlessly yearning after something greater, in all the wild conviviality, restless scheming, audacious enterprise, ironical sporting in word and deed with all persons and things held in awe and regarded as sacred in the common sentiments of humanity, in the whole career of this Carlylean hero. Satan, we have no doubt, has had a great control over the rulers and the politics of modern Europe. Bismarck can see this, and has assuredly not forgotten his own prophecy of the results of the policy of adorning one’s self with the feathers of eagles which have been brought down by the devil’s bullets. When he says that “the devil only knows whether there will be war in Europe,” we hear Robin telling Max that he has concluded an infernal compact and must stand by it. We know, however, that although the devil knows his own plans, and tries to guess at those of God, he cannot fathom or thwart these plans of one who is infinitely stronger and wiser than he is, and has often before made him catch himself in his own mouse-trap. Bismarck is like the legendary giant Christopher, while he was in the service of the demon, thinking him to be the strongest master he could serve. He has acted as if he supposed that God had given up Europe to the devil’s dominion, yet he betrays his conviction in a hundred ways that there is a stronger power than the revolution or the anti-Christian despotism “spotted with red,” which is only biding its time. He despises and sneers at his own master, because he sees him wince at the crucifix on the cross-road. We think it quite probable that in his secret soul he venerates Pius IX., as did Mazzini, and is convinced that if anything on earth is great, true, and as enduring in the future as it has been in the past, it is the Catholic Church. His fear of it, and his war à l’outrance against it, show an estimate of its power which can have no rational foundation except in an unwilling, hostile apprehension of its divine origin. The shallow, clever Count von Arnim is a cool, quiet sceptic. So, we conjecture, is Prince Gortchakoff. Bismarck is too deep for that sort of smooth, placid incredulity. He fears an ultramontane as children are afraid of a bear under the bed. He is afraid of Jesuits, afraid of nuns, afraid of children singing hymns in honor of the Sacred Heart.

We think he has some reason to be afraid. The waters are rising around him, and it is likely that he will yet have to plunge into them “in his swimming-drawers.” “Sooner or later radicalism will stand upright before the king, will demand of him its recompense, and, pointing to the emblem of the eagle on that new imperial flag, it will say: Did you think, then, that this eagle was a free gift?”

“Without a religious basis a state is nothing but a fortuitous aggregation of interests, a sort of bastion in a war of all against all; without this religious basis all legislation, instead of regenerating 160itself at the living sources of eternal truth, is only tossed about by human ideas as vague as changeable.” This is the great case of Bismarck versus Bismarck. His renunciation of his own principles, and maniacal following of passion against reason, is but a type of the conduct of Europe. The modern Germany has renounced and made war upon the principles which were the foundation of its old imperial greatness. France has done the same; Italy has done the same, with a worse and more parricidal impiety. Europe has done it, and the natural consequence is “war of all against all.” “La force,” says Lacordaire, “tôt ou tard, rencontre la force.” “A house divided against itself cannot stand”; and such a house is the one which Bismarck has built. The Napoleonic fabric was overwhelmed by the volcanic fires of Sedan. We believe that there will be a Sedan for the similar fabrics of Cavour and Bismarck, for the whole structure of modern European politics. And where can be found these “living sources of eternal truth” at which “legislation can regenerate itself”? Let us remind our readers that the Encyclical and Syllabus of Pius IX. were proclaimed in 1864, between the epochs of Solferino and Sadowa. We think they will easily understand why the Holy See condemned the principles of “accomplished facts” and “non-intervention,” and perceive to what an abyss these principles have conducted Europe. They will remember that the date of the Council of the Vatican is 1870, between Sadowa and Sedan, and perceive the import and reason of our conclusion, that the source of regeneration for Europe is the same source from which European Christendom received its birth and the life of its youth and manhood. To quote again from Lacordaire: “On n’emprissonne pas la raison, on ne brûle pas les faits, on ne déshonore pas la vertu, on n’assassine pas la logique.” That policy of which Prince Bismarck is the great master is the policy of fraudulence, perfidy, violence, and tyranny. The whole European apostasy and conspiracy against the Holy See—the centre of religious unity and political equilibrium for Europe and the world—is a revolt against reason, history, morality, and the logic by which the sequences of principles and events are demonstrated and applied to the concrete matter of human destiny. These are indestructible powers, and no artillery can overthrow them or fraud pervert their decisions. “There is no kingdom of hell upon earth,” but only a continuous resistance of the infernal powers to the kingdom of Jesus Christ, which from time to time breaks out into a revolution. And the same calm, historic record, in which past Catholic historians have narrated the successive defeats of these revolutionary enterprises will, in each new chapter added by succeeding centuries, continue the chronicle of similar failures; placing the impartial mark of indelible dishonor against the names of all those who have sought for greatness by fraud and violence.

161

VERONICA A LEGEND OF MÉDOC

In fines terræ

Verba corum.

Descending the river from Bordeaux amid verdant isles, and between shores that produce some of the choicest wines of France, we soon come, on the right, to Blaye, with its chivalric memories of Orlando and the fortress that makes it the Key of Aquitaine, as it was in the days of Ausonius, who says:

“Aut iteratarum qua glarea trita viarum

Fert militarem ad Blaviam.”

At the left we pass Pauillac, the ancient villa of St. Paulinus of Nola. The Gironde soon becomes a sea. The shore lowers and is on a level with the waves. The poor hills of Saintonge escape to the north, and the white houses of Royan become visible on the far-off shore. The sea-gull flies over our head, tireless as the ceaseless waves that feed him. We see the white tower of Cordouan at a distance framed in a dazzling sea of blue and gold, out of which it rises two hundred feet above low tide, full of grace and majesty, like an enchanted castle. It is said to stand on the remains of the ancient isle of Antros, which Pomponius Mela, in the first century, places at the mouth of the Gironde. We cannot resist the temptation to climb its three hundred steps for the sake of the wonderful view over fell and flood. The foundation of this tower is lost in obscurity. Even its very name is a mystery. Some think it of Moorish derivation, and that the first light-house here was built by the Saracens—a most ridiculous supposition; for the Moors, though they destroyed a great deal in Aquitaine, certainly had no time for building, whatever their taste for architecture. Others say it was due to Louis le Débonnaire, and that he appointed a keeper to light a beacon-fire and sound a cor, or horn, night and day, to warn the sailor of the perils of the coast; but any one who ever heard the noise of the tumultuous waves breaking high against the cliff of Cordouan can imagine the inefficiency of the most vigorous lungs in such violent storms as are proverbial on the Bay of Biscay. The poor keeper would have needed the Horn of Thunder of the Armorican legend, given St. Florentius by a Norman chief to summon aid when attacked by his piratical horde, or the magic oliphant of Orlando, then kept hard by at Blaye, wherewith its owner once blew so terrible a blast that all the birds dropped dead in the forests of Roncesvalles and it was heard for twenty miles around.

The earliest historical knowledge we have of a light-house here is from a charter of the fourteenth century, by which we learn that the Black Prince built a tower on the cliff of Cordouan, with a chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, kept by a hermit. In 1409 the hermit’s name was Geoffroy de Lesparre, who subsisted by levying 162two grossos sterlingorum on every vessel from Bordeaux laden with wine—a toll that Henry IV. of England authorized him to double.

As for the modern tower of Cordouan, Louis de Foix was

“Le gentil ingénieur de ce superbe ouvrage.”

He was one of the architects employed by Philip II. of Spain in building the Escorial, and the inventor of the mechanism by which the waters of the Tagus were carried to the highest part of the city of Toledo. Some curious things are related of this ingenious architect while in Philip’s service. The ill-conditioned prince, Don Carlos, seems to have placed confidence in him; for he commissioned De Foix to furnish him with a book heavy enough to kill a man with a single blow. The architect made one of twelve tablets of stone, six inches long and four broad, bound in steel covers embossed with gold, which weighed over fourteen pounds, and might have had for its motto the excellent mot of Callimachus on the danger of weighty books. De Thou relates the account of this momentous tome, which is also referred to in the list of Don Carlos’ expenses, and says De Foix told him the idea was by no means an original one of the prince’s, but suggested by a similar volume improvised in his grandfather’s time by Don Antonio de Acuña, Bishop of Zamora, who, confined in the castle of Simancas for taking part in the rebellion of the Comuneros, covered a brick of the size of his breviary with leather, and with this volume of decisive theology killed his keeper and made his escape. Perhaps Don Carlos overlooked the fate of the bishop, who was overtaken by the keeper’s son and hanged on the battlements of the castle of Simancas. All who have visited the Armeria Real at Madrid will remember the armor of this belligerent prelate.

De Foix also invented several curious clocks for Don Carlos, who seems to have inherited Charles V.’s taste for chronometrical instruments. Every one knows the anecdote of the servant who, suddenly entering the emperor’s room one day, overthrew the table and broke to pieces the thirty watches on it. The emperor laughed and said: “You are more successful than I, for you have discovered the only means of making them all go alike.” Among these clocks of complicated mechanism made for the prince by De Foix was one in the shape of an antique temple adorned with columns, that indicated the hours, days, months, and other things.

Don Carlos, as if conscious of the insecurity of his life, also ordered De Foix to construct a machine with pulleys and weights by which he could himself open and shut his chamber door while in bed, and yet no one could enter the room against his will. De Foix seems to have been faithless to the prince; for on the 18th of January, 1568—by the king’s order, to be sure—he stopped the movement of the pulleys, unknown to Don Carlos, whose chamber was thus opened and he conveyed to prison. De Thou’s account of this is confirmed by the letter of an Italian at Madrid written eight days after, in which the door with its pulleys is mentioned.

Louis de Foix (or sans foi) is said to lie beneath the tower he erected; so we could not say: “Light be the turf above thee!” even had we been disposed.

Six or eight miles south of Cordouan 163we came to Soulac, amid the sand-dunes and salt marshes, with its antique church of Notre Dame de la Fin des Terres, held in great veneration by the sailors of the middle ages, and recently dug out of the sands in which it had been buried for one hundred and twenty years. In fact, it had been partly buried since the fourteenth century. Few churches have so strange a history as this. Tradition attributes its original foundation to the pious Veronica, on whose linen veil the weary Saviour, on his way to Calvary, left the impress of his sacred face. It was strange to come upon her traces on this distant shore, and we took great interest in hunting up all the local traditions respecting her. Lady Eastlake considers her de trop, both morally and pictorially, and regards her very existence as problematical; but we who have so often met her in the sorrowful Via Crucis, and pondered on the touching lesson she has left us, feel how utterly that somewhat stringent author is mistaken. Seraphia, Bernice, Beronica, or Veronica—no matter by what name she is called—is a being full of reality to us. As to her identity with the Syro-Phœnician woman of the Gospel, we are disposed to say with Padre Ventura: “It is not certain the hémorroïsse was the same as Veronica, but it is probable that she who had the wonderful favor of wiping the sweat and blood from the divine face of our Saviour was the same matron who touched the hem of his garment with so much courage and faith, and gave such a testimony to his divinity.” Even if the contrary were proved, this would not affect the ancient tradition respecting her apostolate in France, which modern research is far from shaking. Holy chroniclers of the middle ages assert that Veronica was not only an intimate friend of the Blessed Virgin, but one of the women whom Jesus healed of their infirmities and who consecrated themselves to his service, following him in his round of mercy, and aiding him with their substance. The learned Lucas of Bruges declares her positively the Syro-Phœnician woman healed by our Saviour, who, says Julian in his chronicles, lived part of the time at Jerusalem and part at Cæsarea of Philippi. Eusebius says he saw with his own eyes the monument she erected at Cæsarea in memory of her cure, on which she was represented at the feet of her divine Benefactor—a memorial destroyed by Julian the Apostate.

A Polish poet, Bohdan Zaleski, thus alludes to the traditional intimacy of Veronica with the Holy Family in lines full of graceful simplicity in the original:

“Joseph and Mary have lost the child Jesus at Jerusalem. Elizabeth comes to tell them he has been found. 'It must be either in the Temple, then, or at Veronica’s,’ replies Mary.

“The Holy Family go to visit Elizabeth. Jesus, afar off, joyfully hails the aged matron, as well as Veronica, Martha, and Salome.

“Joseph makes the accustomed prayer to thank God for his gifts. Jesus breaks the bread and blesses it. Veronica passes around the basket and distributes the bread among the guests.”

Pilgrims for centuries have mentioned Veronica’s house as at the corner of a street near the spot where Jesus fell for the second time under the weight of his cross. She is said to have been the wife of St. Amadour—the Zaccheus of the Scriptures, who in early life, 164says the legend, was in the service of the Blessed Virgin. He had watched over the childhood of Jesus, and this was why he was so joyful to receive him in his house. After the Crucifixion he and Veronica attached themselves anew to the service of Mary, with whom they remained till her glorious Assumption. According to a lesson in the breviary of Cahors—founded on an old MS. of the tenth century by Hugo, Bishop of Angoulême, which Père Odo de Gissey, who collected all the traditions respecting St. Amadour, declares he had seen—Saul, the persecutor of the church, wished to force Amadour and Veronica to return to the old law. They were condemned to die of hunger, but an angel of the Lord mercifully delivered them from the power of their persecutors and conducted them to a bark, ordering them to abandon themselves to the mercy of the waves and land wherever their boat should come to shore, there faithfully to serve Christ and his holy Mother.

One old chronicle says the demon invoked the winds, swelled the waves, and unchained the very furies against the frail bark. Death at every moment seemed at hand in its most frightful form. But the venerable matron, in the height of danger, seized the sacred relics she brought with her, and, raising them to heaven, invoked the assistance of God. Wonderful to relate, the storm at once ceased, a favorable breeze sprang up and brought the boat safely to the western coast of France to a place called Solac, in face of the setting sun. Here she built, as best she could, a church in honor of the blessed and glorious Virgin Mary, and deposited therein with due honor the holy relics of Our Lady she brought with her.

Bernard de la Guionie, a Dominican of the thirteenth century, says that, by a particular providence of God, they brought with them many precious relics of the Blessed Virgin, such as her hair and shoes, and even some of the Sanctum Lac that nourished the divine Word. It is generally believed this relic gave the name of Solac, or Soulac, to the place—Solum Lac, because the other relics of the Virgin were distributed among various churches. This relic was not once considered so extraordinary. It was not only venerated in many parts of Christendom as the symbol of the divine Motherhood, but it became a symbol of the supernatural eloquence and sweet doctrine of several doctors of the church. Every one who has visited the magnificent gallery at Madrid will remember Murillo’s beautiful painting representing St. Bernard deriving the food that lent to his lips such sweet, persuasive eloquence from the pure breast of the gentle Deipara. The dignity and grace of the Virgin in this painting are something marvellous, and take away everything that might seem human from the subject.

We have all heard of the Grotto of Milk at Bethlehem, with its rock of offence to so many scoffing tourists. It is only those who have a profound faith in the Incarnation that venerate everything associated with the divine Infancy. St. Louis of France built the beautiful Chapelle du Saint Lait in the Cathedral of Rheims to receive the relic that gave it its name. A like relic was venerated in the church of Mans in the time of Clovis. And a vial was borne before the army at the battle of Askalon, in 1224, which reminds one of Rubens’s painting at Brussels in which the Madonna 165bares her breast before the awful Judge, as if he could refuse nothing at the sight of the bosom on which he had so often been pillowed, and where he had been nourished. There is an old legend of a similar vial of this sacred laict being brought from the Holy Land by a pilgrim, who, weary, stopped one day to repose by a fountain near Evron, and hung the reliquary on the hawthorn bush that overshadowed him, and went to sleep. When he awoke, the bush had grown into a tree and the relic was far beyond his reach. He tried to cut the tree down with a hatchet, but could make no impression on the wood. Feeling an inward assurance this was the spot where Providence wished the relic to be honored, he gave it to the bishop, who built thereon a church, which became known as Notre Dame de l’Epine Sainte. The high altar enclosed the hawthorn tree. François de Châteaubriand, abbot of Evron in the sixteenth century, gave this church a beautiful reliquary of silver gilt, in the form of a church, beneath the dome of which was a tube for the relic. Devotion to this relic still exists at Evron.

But to return to Soulac. It is not surprising the Syro-Phœnician woman should come to this distant shore. We know by Strabo that the ancient Phœnicians and Carthaginians came to traffic on this coast, and even went to Great Britain. Soulac was probably the ancient Noviomagos spoken of by Ptolemy. The old legend of Cénebrun speaks of Veronica as la Dame Marie la Phénicienne, who came from the East under marvellous circumstances, learned the language of Médoc, and built a church beside which God caused a fountain of fresh, soft water to spring up out of the salt shore for the cure of tertian fevers so common in this region. Moreover, it appears she was in such constant relations with the governor of Bordeaux, appointed by Vespasian, that, to facilitate the intercourse between Soulac and the capital, a Roman road was constructed, “very level and as straight as a line—rectissimum sicut corda.” If Vespasian had anything to do with it, we may be sure it was straight; for we know how, to rectify a bend in the Flaminian Way, he bored a tunnel through a rock a thousand feet long.

It was at Bordeaux that Veronica converted Benedicta, a woman of distinguished birth, and the wife of Sigebert, a priest of the false gods, who, attacked by a cruel malady, and hearing of the marvels wrought by St. Martial, said to Benedicta: “Go and bring the man of God; perhaps he will take pity on me.” St. Martial gave her the miraculous staff of St. Peter, at the touch of which Sigebert recovered the use of his limbs. He at once proceeded to Mortagne, accompanied by a great number of soldiers and other followers, all of whom were baptized by St. Martial. At his return to Bordeaux he overthrew all the pagan altars, with the exception of one, which St. Martial purified as a memorial of the triumph of the true faith. The inscription graven thereon is still to be seen in the museum at Bordeaux: Jovi Augusto Arula donavit. SS. Martialis cum templo et ostio sacravit—Arula gave this altar to Jupiter Augustus. Martial consecrated it with the temple and vestibule.

Benedicta continued to work miracles with St. Peter’s staff, and greatly contributed to the propagation of the faith in the province. She died in the odor of sanctity, 166and was buried in the oratory of St. Seurin at Bordeaux, where her remains are still honored on the 8th of June.

Sigebert, whose name signifies the powerful or courageous, became the first bishop of Bordeaux, where he is honored as a martyr under the name of St. Fort. To his sanctum feretrum at St. Seurin’s people formerly went to take solemn oaths.

The foregoing reference of the old chronicler to Vespasian reminds us of the part Veronica is said to have had in the destruction of Jerusalem. A curious old play of the middle ages tells us Vespasian was afflicted with the extraordinary inconvenience of a wasp’s nest in his nose, and, after trying every known means of dislodging it, sent for the great Physician of the Jews. Finding he had been put to death by his own nation, he demanded some of his followers, whereupon Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and Veronica are said to have gone to Rome. The emperor expressing a desire to see a portrait of Christ, Veronica held up the Volto Santo before him, at the sight of which he was instantaneously healed. In his gratitude he vowed to take vengeance on the murderers of Jesus, which led to the destruction of Jerusalem. The connection between this legend and the traditional respect in which Veronica was held by Vespasian’s representative at Bordeaux is curious.

Some say it was Tiberius who was cured of the leprosy by the holy veil, which accounts for his leniency to the Christians and his placing a statue of Christ among the gods. These legends, confused by time, may be regarded as traces left by Veronica at Rome, where a constant tradition asserts she herself brought the Volto Santo.

This precious relic must have been in great repute to have been placed at St. Peter’s in 707 by Pope John VII. When removed to the Santo Spirito, it was confided to six Roman noblemen, each of whom had one of the keys that gave access to it. For this service they annually received two cows at Whitsuntide, which were eaten with great festivities. In 1440 it was restored to St. Peter’s, where it is preserved in a chamber within one of the immense piers that sustain the wondrous dome. None but a canon of the church can enter this chamber, but the Vera Iconica is annually exposed from the balcony. It seems to have all the solemn gravity traditional in the Greek representations of our Saviour. Petrarch respectfully speaks of it as the verendam populis Salvatoris Imaginem.

Veronica’s statue is beneath—one of the guardians that stand around the tomb of the apostles. Perhaps she came to Rome with St. Martial; for there are traces of her wherever he announced the Gospel. Else remembers their visit, and says, when they left its walls, they directed their course towards Gaul. Mende and Cahors carefully treasure the shoes of the Virgin she brought, and Puy has some of her hair. St. Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence, says that, according to the ancient traditions of the churches of Italy and France, Amadour and his wife Veronica accompanied St. Martial to Gaul. And St. Bonaventure, the great Franciscan, in the thirteenth century, in one of his homilies, represents St. Veronica in a humble cabin at Pas-de-Grave visited by St. Martial.

St. Amadour embraced the solitary life, and is believed to have been the first hermit of Aquitaine. His whole life is painted on the 167walls of the subterranean chapel at Roc Amadour, where he died. The inscriptions attached to these frescoes thus sum up the legend respecting him:

1. Zaccheus, because he is small and unable to see Jesus in the crowd, climbs up into a sycamore-tree. Jesus, perceiving him, says: Zaccheus, make haste and come down; for to-day I must abide at thy house.

2. Zaccheus is Jesus’ disciple. Veronica, his wife, becomes one of Mary’s attendants. They are persecuted for the faith, but an angel comes to deliver them from the prison in which they are confined.

3. An angel orders Zaccheus and Veronica to put to sea and land at whatever port the vessel shall enter, there to serve Christ, and Mary his holy Mother.

4. The vessel arrives on the coast of Médoc at a place called Soulac, where they live in fasting and prayer. St. Martial visits them and blesses an oratory they have erected in honor of St. Stephen.

5. Zaccheus, at the order of St. Martial, goes to Rome to see St. Peter. St. Veronica remains in the Bordelais country, where she dies. Zaccheus returns to Soulac, where he erects two monasteries and retires from the world.

6. St. Amadour, in the year of our Lord 70, chooses as his hermitage and place of retreat a cliff inhabited by wild beasts, since known as Roc Amadour.

7. The inhabitants of the country are almost savages. St. Amadour catechises them and makes known the religion of our Lord Jesus Christ.

8. St. Amadour erects an altar on the cliff in honor of Mary. This humble altar, now so glorious, is consecrated by the blessed apostle Martial, who visits our saint several times in his retreat.

9. St. Amadour, at the approach of death, is transported before the altar of Mary, where he expires.

Veronica herself is said to have carried in her apron the turf or clay which served to build the chapel of Soulac. It was a mere cabin, which, with the spring, was enclosed in the church built at a later period. This was probably destroyed by the Normans when they ravaged the coast of France to the terror of the people, who doubtless joined heartily in the verse then added to the liturgy, beginning:

Auferte gentem perfidam

Credentium de finibus, etc.

According to the traditions of Aquitaine, Veronica lived to a great age, and, if already in the Temple at the Presentation of the Virgin, she must have been about a century old at her death. She is believed to have died about the year 70. She was, at first buried with great honor at Soulac in the oratory she had so signally endowed. It was Sigebert, or St. Fort, who, says tradition, went to Soulac to pay her the last honors. It was long the custom of the bishops of the diocese, before taking possession of their see, to visit her tomb, and render homage to the venerable traditions of the place. Her remains were afterwards carried for safety to Bordeaux, where her tomb, of the Roman style, is still to be seen in the crypt of St. Seurin. She is said to have been of uncommon stature, and this has been confirmed by the recent examination of her remains, so wonderfully preserved amid the storms of so many ages. Placed under the seal of the archbishops of Bordeaux, and watched over with religious care, a source 168of miraculous grace, and the object of popular veneration, they have escaped the perils of wars and civil commotions. Cardinal de Sourdis, who opened her tomb in 1616, said her festival had been celebrated in his diocese from time immemorial on the 4th of February.

Her remains were carefully examined a few years since by a learned anatomist, who not only declared them of great antiquity, but said the articulation of certain bones showed the advanced age at which she died. Thus science comes to the aid of tradition. The popular belief as to her majestic stature was likewise confirmed by this examination.

Veronica’s oratory, probably destroyed by the Normans, as we have said, was afterwards rebuilt by the Benedictines, but at what precise time is doubtful. We only know there was a monastery at Soulac in 1022, which became dependent on that of Sainte Croix at Bordeaux. In 1043 Ama, Countess of Périgord, gave the lands of Médrin to the monastery of Sancta Maria de Finibus Terræ, ob remedium animæ suæ necnon parentum suorum, to relieve the poverty of the monks who there served God and worthily fulfilled their duty. An old Benedictine chronicle says the devotion of the faithful towards this holy spot increased to such a degree that the monks were soon enabled to build a larger church, which they enriched with much silver and many relics. This was in the twelfth century. This church, of the Roman style, to which the Benedictines were partial, enclosed the miraculous fountain of St. Veronica, which had always been in great repute, and had an altar to her memory where solemn oaths were administered as at the tomb of St. Fort. Her statue stood over the fountain, and, before leaving the church, the devout, after drinking of the water and bathing their eyes, used to cross themselves and make a reverence to “Madame Saincte Véronique.”

This church was no sooner completed than it began to be invaded by the sands, which every year grew higher and higher. The lateral doors had to be walled up, and the pavement raised three times to be on a level with the sands without. Veronica’s fountain was kept open, but soon became a well. The monastery and town finally disappeared under the dunes in the latter part of the thirteenth century. The monks returned when the sands were stayed. They found the church filled to the chancel arch and the capitals of the pillared nave. They removed part of the roof, raised the Avails, and so arranged the church that it continued to be used till devastated by the Calvinists of the sixteenth century. It was hardly repaired before the sands besieged it anew and soon buried it utterly, with the exception of the top of the belfry, which a boy could easily scale, presenting a curious and picturesque appearance on the lone shore. Under Louis XV. the open arches of this steeple became a kind of light-house, and the pines sown by Brémontier soon took root among the arches of the church totally hidden in the sands.

Tradition says Soulac was once important as a port, and alive with commercial activity. Henry III. of England embarked at old Soulac for Portsmouth about the middle of the thirteenth century, which shows how extensive have been the sand deposits since. Once the church was so near the water that in great storms the foundations 169were washed by the waves, though built on a slight acclivity. It appears by documents still preserved at Bordeaux that the sands in 1748 covered the greater part of Soulac, causing the loss of many salt marshes and other sources of revenue. Many other parishes on the shores of Médoc have wholly disappeared. The church of La Canau was rebuilt three times before the moving sands. Sainte Hélène has transported hers ten kilometres, leaving behind what is now an islet with a few trees to mark the spot where it once stood, still called by the people Senta Lénotte, or Ste. Hélenotte—that is, little St. Helen.

St. Pierre de Lignan, or, as called in old titles, Sanctus Petrus in Ligno—St. Peter on the Wood, or Cross—said to have been originally built by Zaccheus, or St. Amadour, in memory of the martyrdom of the apostle, which he had witnessed at Rome, has been abandoned two hundred years, and now lies under the waves of the ocean.

Pauillac, sung by Ausonius in his epistle to Théon:

“Pauliacus tanti non mihi villa foret,”

is likewise half-buried in the sands.

But to return to Soulac. The thirteenth century was the most glorious era in the history of Notre Dame de la Fin des Terres. Its popularity was at that time increased by a terrible pestilence that visited Médoc. The people had recourse to prayer, and went in crowds to the sanctuary of Soulac, vowing to renew their pilgrimage annually. The most noted of these pilgrimages was that of Lesparre, a small town which excited our interest by its reminiscences of the English occupation of the country. Its ruined fortifications; the square tower, sole remnant of the ancient castle, and the church with its Saxon arches and coarse sculpture—all bespeak great antiquity. In the twelfth century the castle and village around it were held by Baron Eyquem, a contentious lord, who liked nothing better than a brush with his neighbors. Perhaps it was this quarrelsome turn of mind that recommended the lords of Lesparre so strongly to the favor of the English sovereigns. Henry III. of England summoned Baron Eyquem to his aid at Paris. The baron’s son also served the same king with all the forces he could muster, and Henry so counted on his devotedness that, in 1244, after promising to reward his services, he commissioned him to aid by his sword and counsel in repelling the King of Navarre, who had invaded Guienne. During the entire contest between England and France the Sires of Lesparre remained faithful to the English; and when the last hour of English rule in the country sounded, the Baron de Lesparre took the lead in an effort to replace Guienne under its dominion. He went secretly to England with the lord of Candale and several notable citizens of Bordeaux to assure the king that the whole country would rise in his favor as soon as the banner of St. George should be once more seen on the Gironde. The English eagerly responded by sending the valiant Earl of Shrewsbury,

“The Frenchman’s only scourge,

Their kingdom’s terror, and black Nemesis,”

to Bordeaux, but their last chance was lost by the defeat at Castillon in 1453, in which the gallant old earl, immortalized by Shakspere—doubly immortalized—was slain. The Baron de Lesparre was banished, and the following year beheaded 170at Poitiers for breaking his bounds. Charles VII. of France then gave the Seigneurie de Lesparre to the Sire d’Albret, to whom in part he owed the triumph of his arms.

Lesparre having lost two-thirds of its inhabitants by a pestilence, the remainder, in their terror, went to prostrate themselves before the altar of Notre Dame de la Fin des Terres, and made a solemn vow to return every year, if spared. The account of this annual pilgrimage reminds one of the caravans of the desert. The pilgrims were divided into two bands. A part were mounted on horseback, preceded by the cross-bearer and the curé; the rest followed on foot with baskets and sacks of provisions. The four bells of Notre Dame de Lesparre pealed joyfully out over the marshes to announce their departure. They stopped at every chapel they came to, to salute its tutelar saint by some hymn in his honor, and then kept on their way, chanting the litanies. Most of these chapels were dedicated to saints specially invoked in time of pestilence; for every grief of the middle ages left its record in the churches. There was St. Catharine, always popular in this region. Then came St. Sebastian, now destroyed, but which gave the name of La Capère (the chapel) to a little village we passed, and St. Roch still standing at Escarpon. As soon as the caravan came in sight of the belfry of Soulac, on a height between St. Vivian and Talais, the pilgrims descended from their horses to salute the Virgin on their knees. Arrived at the holy sanctuary, each one offered his candle streaming with ribbons—a necessary adjunct in all religious offerings in Médoc. An enormous mass of these old ribbons have been preserved at new Soulac. After their devotions the pilgrims went out on the seashore to take their lunch. The next day they returned to Lesparre in the same order. This annual pilgrimage was continued for five centuries, which accounts for the vivid recollections of it among the people. Near the manor-house of the Baron d’Arès, now buried in an immense dune, flowed a fountain as late as 1830, but since filled up, where the pilgrims stopped to quench their thirst, with the pious belief that St. Veronica had brought here a vein of the sacred spring that flowed for the healing of the people in her sanctuary.

Lesparre, once the capital of Médoc, has now only about a thousand inhabitants. From the tower there is an extensive view over the broad moor with its patches of yellow sand, here and there an oasis with a few vegetables, and perhaps an acre or two of oats, barley, or maize, which grow as they can. In winter this vast heath becomes a marsh. The water stands in pools among the sand-hills. The peasant shuts himself up with his beasts, and warms himself by the peat-fire, while the pools freeze and the sands grow white under the icy breath of the sea-winds.

St. Veronica’s Church, so venerated in the middle ages, has within a few years been dug out of the sands and repaired. The miraculous statue of Notre Dame de la Fin des Terres has been restored to its place on her altar, and, after a silence of one hundred and twenty years, the bell once more awakens the echoes of the sand-hills, thanks to the interest taken by Cardinal Donnet in reviving a devotion to this ancient place of pilgrimage. Veronica is once more honored in the place where she died—a devotion 171that seems significant in these times. Perhaps she comes to hold up anew the bleeding face of Christ for the healing of the nations. The Volto Santo is said to have turned pale a few years since when exhibited at Rome. We may well believe it, in view of all the wounds since inflicted on Christ’s Bride—the church. “O Veronica!” cries Padre Verruchino, a Capuchin friar, “suffer us, we pray thee, to gaze awhile at thy holy veil for the healing of our sin-sick souls!”

An old MS. of the thirteenth or fourteenth century at Auch contains the following sequence: De Sancta Veronica Memoria, showing how well our fathers in the faith, even in those dark ages, knew how to rise above every type and shadow to the substance of things hoped for. It is good to echo the prayers of those earnest times.

Salve, sancta facies

Nostri Redemptoris

In qua nitet species

Divini splendoris,

Impressa panniculo

Nivei coloris,

Dataque Veronicæ

Signum ob amoris.

Salve, decus seculi,

Speculum sanctorum

Quod videre cupiunt

Spiritus cœlorum.

Nos ab omni macula

Purga vitiorum,

Inque nos consortium

Junge Beatorum.

Ave, nostra gloria,

In hac vita dura,

Labili et fragili,

Cito transitura.

Nos perduc ad patriam,

O felix figura,

Ad videndam faciem

Christi, mente pura.

Esto nobis, Domine,

Tutum adjuvamen,

Dulce refrigerium,

Atque consolamen,

Ut nobis non noceat

Hostile conamen,

Sed fruamur requie.

Nos dicamus: Amen.^[27]

DANTE’S PURGATORIO. CANTO FIFTEENTH. TRANSLATED BY T. W. PARSONS.

Between the third hour’s close and dawn of day,

Much as appears of the celestial sphere

Ever in motion, like a child at play,

So much appeared now of the sun’s career

To be remaining towards his western way.

There it was evening; here the middle night;

And on our front, the rays directly beat,

For we had circled so the hill that right

On towards the sunset we inclined our feet;

When on my brows I felt a load of light,

172Greater in splendor than before had been,

And o’er my sense, as ’twere from things unknown,

A stupor stole; and of my palms a screen

I made against the excess of light that shone.

As when from water or a mirror’s face

The ray leaps upward to the opponent side,

Mounting in like mode as through equal space

The ray descendeth, and with line as wide

From the direct line of a falling stone

(As science shows, and art hath verified),

So did I seem, by some reflected light

Before me there, to be so struck that fain

I would have suddenly withdrawn my sight.

“What is it, gentle Father, that in vain

I shield my visage from, and still towards us

Seems as in motion?” He made this reply:

“Marvel not if, as yet, the splendor thus

Of heaven’s bright household overpowers thine eye.

This one is sent to ask men up the height;

Soon it shall be that to behold these things

Will cause thee no dismay, but bring delight,

Even as thy soul due disposition brings.”

Soon as we reached the blessèd angel’s side

He said, with glad voice: “Here you enter in

By steps more easy than you yet have tried.”

We thence departed, and, ascending now,

Heard Beati Misericordes chanted

Below, behind us, and, “Be joyful thou

To whom to conquer in this pass is granted!”

My Master and myself in lonely mood

Still mounting, I considered as I went

How I might gather from his word some good,

And turned to him inquiringly: “What meant

That spirit of Romagna speaking so

Of partnership forbid?” He made reply:

“Of his own worst defect he now doth know

The torment; therefore, do not wonder why

Others he chides to make their penance less.

Because you point your wishes at a prize

Where part is lost if it permit largesse,

Envy’s bad bellows move your selfish sighs.

But if the love of the supernal sphere

Heavenward exalted every wish of yours,

Your bosom would not harbor that low fear;

For so much more as there they speak of Ours,

More love in that celestial cloister glows,

And so much more of good each soul secures.”

173“Now to be satisfied my hunger grows,”

I answered, “and my mind is more in doubt

Than if no question I had asked of thee.

How comes it, that a blessing parcelled out

More rich its many owners makes to be

Than if a few possessed it?” He replied:

“Because thy mind its reasoning cannot stretch

Beyond those things of earth to which ’tis tied;

Thou from true light dost only darkness fetch.

That Good ineffable and infinite

Who dwells above there, runs to love as fleet

As to a lucid body a ray of light,

And so much giveth as it finds of heat.

Broad as the flame of charity may burn,

The eternal flame above it grows more great:

And more their number is who heavenward yearn.

More for his love there are, and they love more,

Like mirrors that each other’s light return.

Now, if thou hunger still, despite my lore,

Thou shalt see Beatris, and sure, she will

Give unto this and every wish repose;

Only may those five wounds remaining still,

That heal in aching, like the twain soon close.”

Whiles I was musing, and would fain have said,

“Thou hast contented me,” I looked, and, lo!

To the next cornice we had come; here fled

All power of speech, mine eyes were ravished so!

For, seized with ecstasy, I seemed to be

Rapt in a sudden vision of a crowd

Met in a temple. I could also see

That entering, 'mid those men, a woman stood

With sweet mien of a mother, saying: “Why

Hast thou so dealt with us, my darling son?

Behold, in every place thy sire and I

Have sought thee sorrowing.” Soon as she had done

This vision vanished, and I next beheld

Another lady, with such drops besprent

As down the cheeks flow from a bosom swelled

With scorn of some one and by anguish rent;

Saying: “If thou be ruler of the town,

About whose name the gods had such a strife

And whence all knowledge gleams to give renown,