Volume 25 — SIX SUNNY MONTHS. BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC. CHAPTER XI. A MORNING WITH ST. PETER.

As the day approached for their visit to the crypt of St. Peter, Mr. Vane absented himself very much from the house, and the last day was spent entirely away, from early in the morning till late in the evening. They understood that he was to make his First Communion with them, but asked no questions, leaving him entirely free, and he gave no explanation. The Signora and the two daughters made a Triduum for him in the mornings; and so deeply did they feel the event for him that they looked forward to their own Communion almost as if it were to be their first, and lived as though in retreat for two or three days.

“I feel,” Bianca said, “as if I had been having clandestine interviews with some one outside the house, and that now papa were going to invite him home, and make a feast in his honor. Dear papa! how very good he is; how much better than his daughters!”

She would have been quite shocked and alarmed had any one told her that she entertained such a sentiment, but there was, in fact, in her heart an undercurrent of pride in her father’s piety, and a feeling that the Lord would certainly be particularly pleased with him.

At length the day dawned, the sweet bells of Santa Maria Maggiore, the slipshod bells of Sant’ Antonino, all the bells in hearing, ringing their three, four, five, and one out of the white silence of the aurora.

The Signora smiled to hear, through the open doors, Isabel start awake at the sound, and exclaim in her clear voice: “The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary.”

“I really must not have such a preference for Bianca,” she said to herself, “especially now when Bianca has a lover. Isabel is very honest and earnest.”

The Alba turned to a rosy silver, the silver deepened to gold, the north and west were Tyrian purple, and the sun was on the eastern horizon, painting the long lines of the aqueducts, and the billows of the Campagna, and the towers, high roofs, and cupolas of the city with a fiery pencil. A flock of goats pattered by in the street, to be milked at the doors; hand-carts piled with fruit were dragged slowly in from some garden near the walls; three men walked slowly past, in single file, with large baskets on their heads piled with rich flowers. The perfume of them came up to the window as the Signora leaned out. A wine-cart came slowly down from the Esquiline piazza, laden high with small barrels and half and quarter barrels, brought in by night to the Roman shops from cool grottoes in the Castelli Romani, set here or there on the beautiful mountains that were now a velvety blue under the eastern sky. At the back of this cart was perched high the 16little white dog, with his nose on his paws, and his eyes half shut, but all ready to start up with a sharp bark if any one but looked hard at his precious load. In front, under the side awning, slept the driver. The horse dreamed along through the morning, and the little bunch of bells slung to the cart jingled softly as they went.

“It is certainly earth, but a most beautiful earth,” the Signora thought, sighing with content, as she went out to fasten the girls’ veils on for them.

“There is no need of putting on gloves,” she said, seeing Isabel drawing hers on. “Didn’t you know, child, that one should not wear gloves when going to Communion?”

“Live and learn,” said Isabel, and took her gloves off again. “I have had a doubt on the subject, but I never knew.”

“Another little item you may not know,” the Signora said. “The canonico being a bishop, you have to kiss his ring before receiving. He will himself touch it to your lips after he has taken the Host in his finger and thumb to give you. When I first came here, I was embarrassed by many of these customs, which everybody here takes for granted, you know.”

Nothing could be pleasanter than Mr. Vane’s manner that morning—serious and quiet, but less grave, even, than usual. Seeing Isabel’s eyes fixed anxiously on him while the Signora spoke, he smiled and said: “I am glad your education is not quite finished, my dear. I am still more ignorant, and you must all teach me. I wish, Signora, that you would be so good as to stay by me this morning, so that, if I should be in doubt, I may look at you. I think you would be more correct and prompt than the children here.”

“Certainly,” she said, “I will be near you.”

The porter had sprinkled and swept the stairs just before they went down, and the place was shaded, fresh, and cool. Carlin was whistling to his baby while his wife prepared breakfast—a whistling as soft and clear as the song of a bobolink. The other birds adopted him, and answered him back from the garden, a little surprised, it may be, at the length and smoothness of his carol. The air was so richly scented with orange-flowers that one might almost have thought worth while to bottle it, and there was a rustling sound, exquisitely cool and pervading, of falling water. In a shady corner near the door of the porter’s room was a tiny brazier with a handful of glowing coals in it, and over this Augusto was making his early cup of coffee. Out doors everything shone with a golden color—the light, the houses, the streets—and in that frame the sky was set like a gem, so blue that it could be compared to nothing, and nothing could approach it.

They did not look about as they drove slowly through the city, but, leaning back silent, had a mingled sense of Rome and heaven. It was impossible for any of them to imagine anything more perfect, or to ask for any addition to their happiness. Earth and heaven had united to bless them, and every gift of earth worth the taking was theirs. To have been sovereigns would have oppressed them; to have had millions at their disposal would have been a care and annoyance. They had enough, and their cup was running over.

The narrow streets were beginning to stir as they passed, and 17some were dim, and all were in shade. Not a ray of sunshine touched them, except in the piazzas, till they reached the bridge of Sant’ Angelo. Then all was light, for the sun shot straight on through the Borgo, and all the piazza of St. Peter’s was in a blaze. They were almost faint with the heat as they walked up the ascent; but in a few minutes they were inside the sacred door, where, before entering, summer and winter meet to give the kiss of peace on the threshold, and the one quenches her fiery arrows, and the other warms his frosty breath.

Not a person was in sight as they went in, but they heard, faintly and far away, the mingled voices of the choir coming and going. The circle of ever-burning lamps twinkled like a constellation before them, and invited their steps. Half way up they paused before the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, which is an exception to the cheerful grandeur of St. Peter’s. For this dim chapel gives a sense of remoteness and mystery, and the inner chamber, from which the eyes can see no outlet, seems to lead to some edifice still more vast; as though St. Peter’s were life and day, but here was the way to death and night, yet a way not gloomy and dreadful, but only solemn and mysterious. The Baptistery is merely dark, and produces no such impression.

When they reached the bronze statue, the ladies kissed the foot and passed on, but Mr. Vane stood thoughtfully there for some time before following. And even then he did not pay the accustomed homage to the venerable image. His soul had saluted it, may be; but he was of a different sort from those who have the act of reverence always ready, whether the heart move or not; who will kiss the relic between the kisses of the shameless, and touch what is holy with lips that have just lied, and which are prompt to lie again. This man’s outward devotion was ever the blossom of a plant that grew in his heart, and filled it so that the act was an overflowing.

Marion was already waiting for them at the grand altar. They recognized each other silently, and seated themselves on the steps to wait, being early. The Signora placed herself beside Mr. Vane, and, noticing that he drew a deep breath, and looked about with a glance that took in their position there in the centre of that immense cross, she pointed upward where the dome, glorious with light and color, rested on the legend that had turned the face of the world: “Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. And I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” The legend ran in a circle of gigantic letters rimmed with gold, and the circle and the dome were as the ring and mitre of the church let down from heaven, and hovering in air over the ashes of the first pontiff.

A Mass was being said at the altar directly before them, at the end of the south transept, but not a sound of it reached them. They saw indistinctly the priest, and the mosaic crucifixion of St. Peter over the altar. They heard the coro, now swelling loudly in a brave, manly chant as the whole chapter joined, now sinking in a cadence, now fine with a boy’s clear treble. The bronze canopy above them glittered in every gilded point, the twisted columns that supported it soaring like flame and smoke entwined. The wreath of lamps about the confession was as bright as the ever-burning 18flames within them, and the polished marble answered them back, blaze for blaze. Below—a frozen prayer—knelt the guardian statue, its face turned to the screen behind which rest the relics of St. Peter. Two or three persons, entering the church, looked small as mice down the nave, and intensified the sense of magnificent solitude about them. All this light and splendor seemed so independent of, so superior to, human presence that human beings appeared to be only permitted, not invited, to come. It was a temple for the invisible God.

“There is no outward difference,” the Signora said to Mr. Vane, “between Catholicity and Protestantism which strikes me more than our ways of going to church, and the reasons for going. Protestants go to hear a man talk, and the man goes to talk to them. The affair is a failure if either is missing; for the minister needs the people, and the people need him. On the contrary, one person alone in a Catholic church may accomplish a perfect act of worship. When the priest has offered up a Mass, though no one assist, the world is better for it; and when a worshipper has prayed all alone in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, he has performed a supreme act of piety. There is all the difference between the dwelling-house of God and the house where people go to talk about God.”

“I always felt as if there were too much wind in Protestantism,” Mr. Vane said.

Presently a little company appeared coming out of the sacristy—two boys in white cotte, the canonico’s chaplain and another priest, also in cotte, and, lastly, monsignor the canonico himself, in a purple silk soutane of a color so bright that it was almost red. They passed across the basilica toward the pier of Veronica, and paused there at the altar-rail till the Signora and her friends joined them. A pleasant salutation was exchanged, and the Signora managed to whisper to the canonico that Mr. Vane was to make his First Communion that morning. The beautiful face of the prelate brightened with a pleased surprise, and he turned again and cordially offered his hand to the new convert, who, to the delight of the ladies, bent and kissed the ring on it.

Then the boys lighted their wax tapers, and the party went in behind the altar, down the narrow stair, and through the circling corridor, and found themselves in the heart of St. Peter’s.

This chapel is a tiny place in comparison to the church above, but capable of accommodating many more than the five who are permitted to visit it at a time. Two persons could kneel abreast at each side of the central passage, and four or five ranks, may be, might find room. The end next the screen, visible in the confession from above, is open, the altar being at the upper end, and the whole has not a ray of daylight. From this chapel one can look back and see through the screen Canova’s marble pontiff, and the ring of golden lamps on the railing of the confession, and, perhaps, some worshippers kneeling outside the sanctuary which one has had the privilege of entering. Directly overhead are the grand altar and the dome.

The Signora took a prie-dieu near the altar, motioning Mr. Vane to a place beside her; the sisters knelt behind them at either side the chapel; and Marion, quite apart, and behind the rest, leaned in a chair and hid his face in his hands. He 19had been surprised into the situation, and, though he had tried sincerely to do his best, was still a little alarmed by it. Shaken out of his usual artistic mood, which regarded first what appeared, and then peeped inside from without, he found himself suddenly whirled into the centre, where, either from darkness or from too much light—he knew not which—he could not see. It was one of those moments of fear in persons who communicate seldom but sincerely, which presently give place to the most perfect reassurance and peace.

The Mass was over. Monsignor laid aside his vestments, and knelt at a prie-dieu reserved for him; his chaplain placed a book on the desk before him, and withdrew, and there was silence.

The church could do no more for them. She had brought them to St. Peter’s tomb, and given them the Bread of angels.

It was impossible that the mind should not shake off the present and go back to the time when the dust in the shrine before them lived, and moved, and spoke, and when the invisible Lord in their breasts was the visible Lord in the flesh, teaching, persuading, and suffering. The Lord in their hearts said to the apostle in the shrine: “Wilt thou also go away?” And the apostle answered him: “Lord, to whom shall we go?” And again Peter said: “Lord, thou shalt never wash my feet.” And Jesus answered him: “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.” The Lord in their hearts was he who stood in the palace of the high-priest, bound and smitten upon the cheek, and Peter, standing by, denied that he knew him. The pallid lamps shone on the face of the Master turned for one reproachful look, and the red light of the coals burned up, as if the very fire blushed, in the face of the cowardly follower. They saw the seaside, where the risen Lord stood and called, and Peter, no longer a coward, but on fire with love and joy, flung himself into the sea to go to him. And yet again, in this memory which had become a presence and a voice, the Lord spoke to Peter: “Lovest thou me?” And Peter answered him once, and again, and, grieving, yet again: “Thou knowest that I love thee.” And Jesus said to him: “Feed my lambs. Feed my sheep.”

O perfection of power and of obedience; for within this hour, which memory, unrolling again her shrunken scroll, showed to be eighteen centuries distant—within this hour both the sheep and the lambs had been fed!

“I feel as though I had a garden in my heart,” Marion said to the canonico as they went up into the church again.

The two were walking slowly and last, and in speaking Marion bent and kissed the prelate’s hand.

The hand held his a moment closely, and the canonico replied: “Where the Tree of Life is, there is always a garden.”

This conversation they had listened to between the Master and Peter followed them down the church, whose splendors seemed rather like virtues made visible than like any work of the hands of man. If they should ever be so lost and ungrateful as to leave this fold, to whom, indeed, should they go? And unless the Lord washed them from their sins, surely they could have no part with him. They still saw the lessening vision of the high-priest’s dim and solemn house as they passed down the church and out through the first 20portal; then the second fell behind them, and an Italian summer day caught them to its glowing breast.

“It seems to me,” the Signora said, “as if we had just been ordained, and were being sent out as missionaries. Of course you go home to breakfast with us, Marion,” she added.

“I was thinking of Fra Egidio this morning,” said Bianca softly, as they drove home through the hot sunshine. “He used to say, instead of 'I believe in God,’ 'I know God.’”

“That blessed Fra Egidio!” struck in Isabel, who had lately been reading about him. “He used to go into ecstasies, papa, whenever he heard the names of God or of heaven. And when he went into the street, sometimes people would call out, 'Fra Egidio, paradiso! paradiso!’ and instantly he would be rapt into an ecstasy, and perhaps be lifted up into the air. Why doesn’t some one go into ecstasies now at the thought of heaven?”

“Nobody prevents you, my dear,” her father said. “If you will be so lost to the world and so given to God that the mere hearing his name will lift you from the earth, so much the better.”

“You are quite right, papa,” she answered gently. “I had better look to myself.”

He smiled and laid his hand tenderly on hers.

“I was particularly pleased with the account of the interview between Fra Egidio and St. Louis,” the Signora said. “The king came incognito to visit the ecstatic, and went to the convent in Perugia where he was living. Fra Egidio, knowing supernaturally that he was there, and who he was, went out to meet him. They fell on their knees on the threshold, and embraced each other, and, after remaining for some time in that silent embrace, rose and separated, without having uttered a word. That was truly a heavenly meeting.”

Their attention was here attracted to a clergyman who walked slowly along the shady side of their street, accompanied by his chaplain. This prelate, the patriarch of Antioch, was of a venerable age, and wore a long beard. He alone, perhaps, of all the prelates in Rome, appeared in the street with the distinguishing marks of his rank—the chain and cross, the red-purple stockings, sash, and buttons, and the green tassel on his hat.

A little boy on the sidewalk caught sight of him, and instantly snatched his cap off and ran to kiss the patriarch’s hand. The action was perfectly natural and simple, and performed with a charming mixture of reverence and confidence.

“How pretty it is!” exclaimed Isabel. “And there is another.”

A little girl had left her mother’s side, and run also to kiss the patriarch’s hand as he passed. No idea seemed to have entered her curly head that she was approaching too nearly a grand personage, or that he would be annoyed or interrupted by her homage, any more than a crucifix or a picture of Maria Santissima would have been.

“The Roman clergy have the sweetest manners with the poor,” the Signora said; “and the highest dignitaries, when they are in public, are approached with a facility which I found, at first, astonishing. I recollect going to St. Agatha’s, the church of the Irish College, to the Forty Hours, shortly after I came here. It is in a populous neighborhood, as you know, and the streets 21swarm with children. A clergyman came into the church and knelt at a prie-dieu just in front of me. There were a dozen or so children wandering about, and presently they collected at this prie-dieu, and, sitting on the step or standing at the desk, almost leaning on the priest’s shoulder, they stared at the people and whispered to each other. I expected to see him send them away or go away himself; but he only put his hands over his face and remained immovable. I had almost a mind, for a minute, to go and speak to the children, but, fortunately, did not. After a while, nervous, impatient Yankee though I am, with a passion for an orderliness which strikes the eyes, I began to see the beauty and true piety of this gentle behavior, and to find something more edifying in that priest who suffered the little ones to come near him, and near the Lord, than I should have found if he had gone into an ecstasy before the Blessed Sacrament. It was the sweetest charity. Indeed, much of that which seems to us to be cowardice in the Romans is nothing but a spirit of gentleness fostered by religion. They are non-combatants. The church found them a fiery and warlike people, constantly committing deeds of violence, fond of conquest, and impatient of control, and she has subdued them to children. If they are too submissive to usurpation, that is better than the other extreme. The lion has become the lamb, and the lamb is ever the victim. And now here we are at home.”

Annunciata and Adriano had conspired to make the breakfast as festal as possible, and had succeeded perfectly. But for the light west wind that fluttered in at the still open windows, the air of the rooms would have been too fragrant; and but for the long morning fast and drive, the breakfast would have been too profuse. It was, in fact, both breakfast and dinner, it being nearly noon when they sat down; and they sat two hours talking before they separated. Just before they rose from the table Annunciata came in, bearing a large dish covered with green leaves, a smile of triumph on her face. She placed the dish in the centre of the table, and looked at her mistress.

“Brava!” exclaimed the Signora. “Now, children, do you recognize that leaf?” lifting one from the dish, and holding it up between a thumb and finger. “Do you know what tree grows a hand for a leaf? Do you see the shape?”

“'In the name of the prophet, figs!’” quoted Isabel.

“Yes, the first figs of the season, and perfect; just soft enough to flatten on the plate and against each other, yet firm; and, withal, sweeter than honey. You should see the woman who brings them to me—a rosy, russet creature, with eyes as black as sloes, and pounds of gold on her neck and hands. That gold she wears always. It is their way. She has four gold chains, one hanging below the other, and each bearing a medallion. Through these shines a large gold brooch. Her earrings are immense hoops, and she wears gold rings on every finger, piled up to the joints. She was once so ill that they thought best to give her Extreme Unction, and, when the priest came to administer the sacrament, he found her lying, pale and speechless, but with all her rings and lockets on. These people do not value stones, but they glory in pure, solid gold.”

“Might it not be their dowry?” Mr. Vane asked.

22“Very likely; sometimes it certainly is. Sometimes the dowry is in pearls, and a contadina will have strings and strings of them. I am told, however, that the common people in Rome have a saying that pearls are for butchers’ wives. I don’t know why, and one has been pointed out to me as owning half a dozen strings of them. They are not a good investment, however, for they are easy to spoil and easy to steal. A very safe and sensible way for providing a girl’s dowry exists in one of the towns near Rome. All along the river-bank is level land divided into small lots. When a girl is born, the father buys one of these, if he is able, and plants it full of a sort of tree that grows rapidly, and is much used for certain kinds of wood-work. While the girl grows her dowry grows; and when she marries, the trees are cut down and sold. I have often wished that American fathers of families would make some provision for their children when they are born, setting aside a sum, if it should be ever so small, to increase with their years, and be a help in giving them a start in the world. It seems a sin that parents should bring a family of children into the world, all dependent on one life, and, if that life be cut off, be thrown out helpless and unprovided for. How often we see, by the death of a father whose labor or salary maintained his family in comfort, the whole family plunged in distress and left homeless! How would Bianca, here, like to have her dowry in pearls?”

“She has a mouth full of them,” said Marion hastily. He could not bear that his lady should be thought in want of a dowry, when she was a fortune in herself. “And those are not her only jewels.” He reached, and, taking her hand, gathered together the little pink finger-tips like a bunch of rosebuds. “She has ten rubies fit for a crown,” he said, and touched his lips to the clustered fingers, while the girl laughed and blushed.

Mr. Vane seemed to be struck with a sudden recollection. He put his hand to his forehead and considered, then rose from his chair. “Wait a minute,” he said, and went into his own room, where they heard him opening his trunk, and searching about in it. Presently he returned with a tiny morocco case. “It is the merest chance in the world that I did not leave this in America,” he said. “I did not dream of bringing it. Bianca’s mother left a pair of ear-rings for the girl who should marry first.”

He opened the case and took them out—two large, pear-shaped pearls, of exquisite lustre, hanging from a gold leaf, on which a small, pure diamond glistened like a speck of water.

“And you could have such a treasure with you, and never say anything about it!” the Signora exclaimed. “O the insensibility of men! And these girls never saw the pearls before!”

She fastened the jewels in the pretty ears they were destined for. “These are two gems you forgot in your enumeration, Marion,” she said. “And, by the way, how fitting it is that, when the ears are shells, there should be pearls hung in them!”

“I’m glad you think them so pretty,” Mr. Vane said with compunction. “I really never did think of them before. Perhaps it was very stupid of me.”

“On the contrary, it was very 23wise of you, papa,” Isabel said. “They are a great pleasure to us all now; but if we had known of them, I should now feel as if they had been taken away from me.”

“When you are engaged, you shall have a pair as pretty, if they are to be found,” her father said.

They drank Bianca’s health; and, the talk still running on gems, Marion told an incident of a ring which a friend of his had lost in the snow, in some part of Germany, as he stood looking down on the town from a hill outside. Several months afterward, going to the same spot, he saw the ring at the top of a little plant. The first sprout had come up inside it as it lay on the ground, and, growing, had lifted it, till it stood almost a foot high, glistening round the green stem.

“What a disappointed little plant it must have been when its gold crown was taken off!” the Signora said regretfully.

“It no doubt grew better without it,” Mr. Vane replied. “Besides, the ring did not belong to it.”

It was the tiniest little intimation of a correction, and the Signora was highly pleased. He saw the smile with which she received it, and was content. Nothing can express more kindness than a gentle reproof, and nothing can show more affection than to take pleasure in such a reproof.

When they had separated, the Signora went into the kitchen to give a private and special commendation to Annunciata for her well-doing that morning, and to glance at that part of her domain. She never omitted this word of praise, and the faithful servant counted herself well paid for any pains she could take when she had been assured that what she had done had given pleasure.

This Roman kitchen was as little as possible like the New England kitchen. Closets and pantries there were none; the single stone walls did not admit of them. Two large cases of covered shelves took their place. Instead of the trim range with its one fire-place, was a row of five little furnaces, over each of which a dish could be set. A sheet-iron screen extended out over these, like the hood of a chaise. All the side of the chimney, where it extended into the room, shone with bright copper and tin cooking vessels, hanging in rows. Underneath were two baskets, one with charcoal, another with carbonella—the charred little twigs from the baker’s furnaces, that can be kindled at a lamp. One of the furnaces still had a glow of coals within it, and near by was the feather fan that had been used to kindle and keep it bright. The brick floor was as clean as sprinkling and sweeping could make it. They never wash a floor in Rome, and only the fine marbles and mosaics ever get anything better than that sprinkling and sweeping. The one window looked across the court to the Agostinian convent attached to Sant’ Antonino, and to the little belfry with the two bells that never could be made to strike the right number of times, and into the garden of the frati, where rows of well-kept vegetables were drinking in the sun as if it were wine.

This kitchen was quite deserted, except for the cat, who was standing, with a very mild and innocent expression of countenance, close to the closed door of a cupboard where meat was kept. She glanced calmly at the Signora, and walked away slowly and with dignity.

“Where is Annunciata, Signor Abate?” inquired the Signora.

24The cat turned and mewed with great politeness, but in an interrogative tone, as who should say, “I beg your pardon?”

And then a splashing and bubbling of water from without reminded the padrona that her handmaiden was washing that day—was “at the fountain,” as they express it.

“Why should I not go down for once and see how it seems there?” she thought. “After all, this girl is dependent on me, lives with me, serves me in everything, is at my call night and day, and I do not touch her life except at certain points—the table, the cleanliness and order of the house, and the errands she does for me outside. I don’t know much about her, after all.”

She opened a door that she had never passed in the years she had lived in that apartment, and descended a narrow stone stair that wound in a steep spiral, lighted at each turn by a small hole pierced in the outer wall. Down and down—it seemed interminable, but was, in reality, two stories and a half. The landing was in a dim store-room a little below the ground level, and used as a cellar. From this a passage and door led into a small court enclosed between an angle of the house and a high wall, like a room with the ceiling taken off. Here a spout of water flowed into a double fountain-basin, where the girl stood washing and beating linen on the stone border. As she worked, steadily, and too much absorbed to see her mistress standing near her, tears rolled down her face, and dropped one by one on the clothes in her hands.

The Signora looked a moment, astonished and shocked. Was this the girl who had come and gone from early morning cheerfully at her bidding, and who had smiled as she served the table within half an hour? She stood awhile looking at her, then quietly withdrew, and, going up-stairs again, rang a hand-bell from the window. Annunciata came up immediately, quite as usual, with no sign of tears in her face, except a slight flush of the eyelids, and made her usual inquiry: “Che vuole?”—What does she wish for?

“I have several things to say,” her mistress replied. “I came out first to thank you for having given us such a beautiful breakfast. Everything was well done. I forgot you were at the fountain.”

The smile came readily, and with it the ready word: “It pleased her?”—always the ceremonious third person.

“And now I want to ask you something,” the Signora went on kindly. “Sit down. If you do not like to tell me, you need not. But I should be very sorry if you had any trouble, especially anything in which I could help you, and did not let me know. You have been crying. Are you willing to tell me what is the matter?”

The girl looked as startled as if she had been caught in a crime, and began to stammer.

“If it is something you do not want to tell me, I will not say any more about it,” her mistress went on. “You have a right to your privacy, as I have to mine. But if there is anything I can do for you, tell me freely.”

There was a momentary struggle, then the tears started again, and all the story came out. Annunciata had received, three days before, news of the death of her only brother, who had died of fever in some little town a day’s journey from Rome, and was already buried 25when she learned first that he was sick.

The Signora listened with astonishment and compunction. For three days this girl had gone about with a bitter grief hidden in her heart, missing no duty, submitting, perhaps, to a little fault-finding now and then, and weeping only when she believed herself unobserved, and all the time, while she suffered, ministering to and witnessing the pleasures of others.

“My poor girl, why did you not tell me at first?” she asked gently.

“Oh! why should I?” was the reply. “You were all so happy and you could not bring the dead back.”

“I could have sympathized with you, and given you a few days’ rest,” the Signora said. “I would not have allowed you to work.”

“It was better for me to work,” the girl replied, wiping her eyes. “I should only have cried and worried the more, if I had been idle.”

There seemed nothing that could be done. That class of poor do not adorn the resting-places of their dead, or the Signora would have paid the cost; they do not wear mourning, or, again, she would have paid for it; and this girl had no family to visit and mourn with. In her brother she had lost all. The only service possible—and that she accepted gratefully—was to have Masses said for the dead. That settled, the Signora dismissed her to her work again, and shut herself into her chamber, but not to sleep.

“O the unconscious, pathetic heroism of the suffering poor!” she thought. “Where in the world have I a friend who would cover such a grief with smiles rather than disturb my pleasure? Where in the world does one see such patience under pain and hardship as is shown by the poor? They sigh, but they seldom cry out in rebellion. They accept the cross as their birthright, and both they and we grow to think that it does not hurt them as it would hurt us. How clearly it comes upon me now and then, why our Lord lived and sympathized with the poor, and why he said it would be so hard for the rich to enter heaven!”

She was looking so serious and unrefreshed when the family gathered again that they at once inquired the cause, and she told them.

“I feel as though I must have been lacking in some way,” she concluded, “or a servant who has been with me so long, and who has no nearer friend in the world than I am, would have come to me at once with her troubles. If the relations between servants and employers are what they should be, the servants should go to the master or mistress with all their joys and sorrows, just as children go to their parents. I have been thinking that there is one reason why, the world over, people are complaining of their servants. They have contented themselves with simply paying their wages and exacting their labor. There has been no sympathy. The association has been simply like that of fish and fowl, instead of that of the same creatures in different circumstances.”

“I have always thought that in America,” Mr. Vane said. “There is not a country in the world, probably, where families have been, as a rule, more disagreeable toward their servants, and servants so troublesome, in consequence, to their employers. But I believe it is very seldom that a good mistress or master does not make a good servant, so far as the will goes.”

26Seeing her still look downcast and troubled, he added: “You should not reproach yourself. It is rather your kindness toward this girl which has won such a devotion from her. If you had lacked in kindness and sympathy toward her, she would have been far more likely to have shown her trouble, and made it an excuse for not attending to her work as usual.”

“Do you think so?” she asked, brightening; and thought in her own mind, “How very pleasant it is to be reassured when one is distressed about things!”

And then later, when they heard Annunciata in the kitchen, the sisters went out and spoke each a kind and pitying word to her, touching her hard hand softly with their delicate ones; and when she came in later to perform some service, Mr. Vane had also a word of sympathy. But, greatest comfort of all, the Signora and Bianca went up to the Basilica and arranged that a Mass should be said the next morning for the dead, and Annunciata was told that she should go with them to hear it.

That evening the servants were instructed to deny the family to every one but Marion, and, when the sun was low, they all went out on the loggia to see the night come in, and breathe the sweet freshness that still came with it. For it is only in dog-days that the Italian nights are too warm for comfort, and not always then. The great heat comes and goes with the sun.

As they went into the loggia, there was a rustling noise in the garden underneath, and out from the trees leaning against the wall flew clouds of sparrows, and dispersed themselves in every direction. It would appear that every twig must have held a bird.

“I am sorry we have disturbed their nap,” Mr. Vane remarked. “How disgusted they must be with our curious nocturnal habits!”

They did not wish to talk, but only to think and see, and speak a word as the mood took them. The miraculous shadow of St. Peter still hovered above their spirits. They sat in silence, receiving any impression that the scene might make.

Flocks of birds flew in from the seaward, all hastening to some nest or tree-home, their bodies clear and dark, their swift wings twinkling against the topaz sky. The evening star, at first softly visible, like a diamond against another gem, began to grow splendid, while the glowing west changed by imperceptible degrees to a silvery whiteness, and took on an exquisite hint of violet, as if it thought, rather than was, the color. The flowers disappeared in masses of dark green, the gray towers and roofs deepened to black, the pure air was delicious and beaded with coolness, like a summer drift sprinkled with snow. The Ave Maria began to sound here and there, echoed from one church to another. Now and then some bell, besides the Angelus, rang out with a festal clangor for five minutes, a musical chorus coming in from the southward.

“What a grand procession of saints walk for ever through the Roman days!” the Signora exclaimed. “It would be something dazzling to the mind, if one could live on a central height, and hear the bells announce the different festas as they come, singly or in groups, and know who and what each saint is. For example, this evening we hear from the Aventine the rejoicing announcement that to-morrow is the festa of St. Alexis in his church, and 27from another church is called out the name of St. Leo IV., and from another St. Marcellina, the sister of St. Ambrose, and twelve martyrs will be celebrated in another church. If we should go to-morrow to either of those, we should find them adorned, sprinkled with green out into the very street, High Mass or Vespers going on, and the relics exposed on the altars. To-morrow night other bells will ring in other saints and martyrs. The night after, from a church in Monte Citorio will come the call, Ecco St. Vincent of Paul! and the secular missions and the Sisters of Charity will be doing their best in his honor, and there will be cardinals, and pontifical vespers, and a panegyric. Four or five churches will celebrate their special saints the next day, and the next will be St. Praxides, on the Esquiline here; and the day after we shall be invited to pay our respects to St. Mary Magdalen. And then on to St. James the Great, which will be a great day; and the day after comes St. Anna, the mother of the Blessed Virgin; and, a little later, St. Ignatius marches by. What it would be to set the world aside, sit aloft on some tower there, listen to the announcements rung out from belfry after belfry, meditate, and look with the eyes of faith on what comes! What faces of young maidens, delicate spouses of Christ, bent like clusters of living flowers to listen to the voices that praise them, turned again heavenward to ask for blessings on their clients! What queenly women incline their crowned heads, when the Sacrifice goes up in their name, to see who of those who offer it is worthy and sincere! What glorious men, strong and shining, gaze down into the battle-field where their triumph was won, to read in the upturned faces of the combatants how the fight goes, and who needs their aid! I sometimes think that the saints look only when they are called by name, but that the Blessed Mother looks always. It is the mother who goes after the child who forgets, and watches over it while it sleeps.”

The flocks of sparrows that had fled at their approach, weary of waiting for them to go away, after peeping and reconnoitring the situation, began to come back and flutter in under the foliage again. For a few minutes the trees stirred all through with them, as if with a breeze; then the little heads were tucked under the tired wings, and they all went to sleep, and, perhaps, dreamed.

The family smiled and hushed themselves, not to disturb their rest. Each heart was softly touched by the nearness of so many tiny sleepers. Peace seemed to float silently out from under the thronged branches and laden twigs of those motionless trees, in which no passer-by would have detected a sign of life.

“I think,” the Signora said softly after a while, “that when the priest comes next Holy Saturday to bless my house, I would like to have him bless these trees too, that no net or trap may be thrown over them by night, and no rifle be fired into them by day. The trees and their tenants belong to my household.”

“Your house is blessed every year?” Mr. Vane asked.

“Yes. On Holy Saturday the priest goes round through every parish, a little boy with him bearing holy water, and blesses all the houses, if the people desire it. The custom is, too, to have ready on a table a dish of boiled eggs, an ornamented loaf of cake, and a plate 28of sausages. These are blessed, to be eaten Easter Sunday. I am not sure, but I fancy that the custom is a remnant of times when the Lenten fast was, perhaps, more strictly and universally observed than now. Now, whether from a deterioration of health or of faith, very few persons consider themselves strong enough to observe the regulations perfectly. Modern civilization seems to be very weakening in every way.”

“I am inclined to think that good comes, or will come, out of all these changes and seeming failures,” Mr. Vane observed. “If the races have become weaker physically, their passions have also become weaker; and it may be that, in order to tame them, it was necessary to reduce their physical strength. We do so sometimes with wild animals. Perhaps when we shall have learned better how to live, and, after running the circle of follies, grown soberer and wiser, the increasing vitality will go more in the intellectual and spiritual ways than it did before. I am hopeful of the human race, from the very fact that it is so uneasy about itself. The audacious boldness of some nations seems to me to spring from desperation rather than confidence. There is no confidence anywhere. Fear rules the world. Everywhere strong, or even desperate, remedies are proposed, and philanthropic doctors abound.

“Malgré les tyrans,

Tout réussira,”

sing the communists; and I believe that things will come out right in spite of every difficulty, and be more secure because of the difficulties past. When we shall have looked about in vain in every other direction, we shall at last learn to look upward for the solution. But excuse me for talking so long in this beautiful silence. Your Easter eggs were not meant to hatch such a sermon, Signora.“

They rose, presently, to go into the house, and, as they loitered slowly along the passages, Mr. Vane remarked to the Signora: “I observe that the natural direction of your eyes is upward.”

“Is it?” she asked. “Come to think of it, I believe you are right. It is always cramping for me to look down. I recollect that, when I was a child, if I dropped my eyes on being a little embarrassed, it was almost an impossibility for me to raise them again.”

Going in past the kitchen, they found Adriano in chase of a cockroach that had dared to show itself there, and they stopped to learn the result, feeling that it interested them. It was not successful, and the man rose from his knees very much vexed.

“These bagarozzi don’t know what Ascension day is nowadays, or they would hide themselves,” he said.

Mr. Vane asked what connection there was between bagarozzi and Ascension day, and the servant-man, albeit a little ashamed of having committed himself to tell a story, explained:

“When I was young, it was a custom among the Roman boys, on the vigil of the Ascension, to go down into our cellars, or those of our neighbors, and catch as many bagarozzi as we could. When evening came, we fixed to the back of each one a bit of wax taper, melting the end to make it stick. Half an hour or so after Ave Maria we marshalled our bugs, lighted the tapers on their backs, and sent them off in a procession. While they 29went we sang a song we had. It was a pretty sight to see the little tapers scampering off through the dark.”

“Why! I should think it would have scorched them!” Bianca exclaimed with surprise.

The man laughed at her simplicity. “Who knows?” he said, with a shrug. “They never came back to tell us.”

Isabel inquired what the song was to which this novel procession marched.

The man laughed again and repeated the doggerel:

“'Corri, corri, bagarone;

Che dimane è l’Ascensione;

L’Ascension delle pagnotte:

Corri, corri, bagarozzi.’”

Which might be rendered: “Run, run, my noble roach; for to-morrow is Ascension day—Ascension day of the little loaves. Run, roach, run.”

“What demons of cruelty children can be!” remarked Isabel as the family went on.

Adriano laughed as he looked after them. “How queer these forestieri are!” he said. “They want to see everything and know the name of everything. The signorine here ask me the name of every tree and flower in the garden, and every bird and bug that moves. How should I know? My niece, Giovannina, says there’s an English-woman going about getting the poor old women to tell her fables, and ghost-stories, and all sorts of nonsense; and they say that she prints it in a book. They must be in great need of books to read. Then the padrona will stand and look at the moon as if she never saw nor heard of it before, and expected it to drop down into the garden and break into golden scudi. I saw her one day this spring, on Monte Cavallo, stand half an hour and stare at the sky, just because it was red where the sun went down. The sky is always red when the sun sets in clouds. Two or three signori thought she was stopping to be noticed, and they walked about her, and one of them leaned on the railing close to her, staring at her all the time, and by and by spoke to her. I went up behind her, but she didn’t know I was there. She hadn’t seen any one till she heard the man say good-evening to her. You should have seen the way she looked at him. Then she caught sight of me. 'Adriano,’ she said, 'I’ll give you a hundred lire to fling that fellow over the terrace head first.’ I told her that it would cost me more than a hundred lire to do it. She put out her lips—I suppose she thought I was a coward—and muttered a word in English. Then she said to me, as she turned her back on the man, loud enough for him to hear: 'How dare such rascals come up when the sun shines!’ But she wouldn’t let me walk beside her, but made me follow her all the way home. And she was so mad that, when I started to say something as we reached the door, she stopped me. 'When I want you to speak, I shall ask you a question,’ she said.”

“The Signora is very kind,” Annunciata said.

“I didn’t say she wasn’t,” the man replied dogmatically. “But it doesn’t become ladies to go into the street alone, nor to stop to look at anything, nor to glance about them.”

The girl did not reply. She had been trained in the same opinions, and did not know how to combat them. But sometimes it seemed to her that the streets and the public 30places were for women as well as for men to see, and that a woman should not be a prisoner because she had not a carriage or a servant to attend her. Moreover, she sympathized, in her simple way, with many of the Signora’s tastes. To her the song of the birds they fed with crumbs from the windows was a sort of thanks, and she regarded them as little Christians; and now and then, when she looked at the sky, something stirred in her for which she had not words—a pleasure and a pain, and a sense of being cramped into a place too small for her. She could not express it all, and did not quite understand it. But there was just enough consciousness to make Adriano’s pronunciamiento rankle a little. The inner ferment lasted while she polished the knives and her companion blacked carefully a pair of boots; then she burst forth with an expression of opinion which astonished even herself, for it sprang into speech before she had well seen its meaning—an involuntary assertion of nature. “I believe that women should settle their own business, and men settle theirs,” she said. “I haven’t seen the man yet that knows enough to teach the Signora how she ought to behave nor what she ought to do; and many’s the man she could teach. Men are poor creatures. Women can’t do anything with them without lying to ’em. That’s what gives them such a great opinion of themselves, because most women flatter them when they want to get anything out of them.”

“Ma, che!—well, to be sure!” exclaimed Adriano. It wasn’t worth arguing about. He merely laughed.

Meantime, gathered in the sala, the family made plans for the coming days while they waited for supper. Bianca, seated at the piano, was trying to recall a fragment of melody she had heard a soprano of the papal choir sing at a festa not long before. “The cadence was so sweet,” she said. “It was common—a slow falling from five and sharp four to four natural—but the singer put in two grace-notes that I never heard there before. He touched the four natural lightly, then sharped it, then touched the third and slid to the fourth. It was exquisite, and very gracefully done. His voice was pure and true, and the intervals quite distinct.”

“I asked his name,” Isabel said, “and was disgusted to hear a very common one, which I have forgotten. A beautiful singer ought to have a beautiful, birdy-sounding name.”

“He can make his own name sound 'birdy,’ if you give him time,” Mr. Vane said. “Take Longfellow as an example. There couldn’t be a more absurd name. Yet the poetry and fame of the man have flowed around it so that to pronounce the name, Longfellow, now is as though you should say hexameter.”

And then what were they to do, and where were they to go to-morrow, and the day after, and the day after? They ran over their life like a picture-book which was so full of beauties they knew not which to look at first. All felt that they were laying up sunny memories for the years to come—memories to be talked over by winter evening fires in their country across the sea; memories to amuse and instruct young and old, and to enrich their own minds. And not only were they furnishing for themselves and their friends this immense picture-gallery and library of interesting facts and experiences, but they were 31expanding and vivifying their faith. They were making the personal acquaintance, as it were, of the saints, and seeing as live human beings those of whom they had read in stories so dry as to make them seem rather skeletons than men and women. To enter the chamber where a saint had prayed, had slept, had eaten, had yielded up his last breath; to stand in some spot and think: “Here he stood, on these very stones, and saw faces of heaven lean over him, and heard mouths of heaven speak to him; or here, when such temptations came as we weakly yield to or weakly resist, he fought with prayer, and lash, and fasting”; to look at a hedge of rose-bushes, and be told: “Here, when he was tempted, a man, weak as other men, flung himself headlong among the thorns”—this was to waken faith and courage, and make their religion, not an affair of holidays and spectacles, and communions of once a year, but of every day, and of private hours as well as of public.

“Half our Roman holiday is gone,” Mr. Vane said, “and for at least four weeks of the other half the heat will allow us to do little or nothing. I recommend you girls to treasure all your little pleasures, and keep an exact account of them. The more fully you write everything out, the better. These diaries of yours will probably be the most interesting books you could have after a few years.”

“I am trying to forget all about America,” Isabel said, “to fancy that I have always lived here, and always shall live here, and to steep myself as much as possible in Italian life, so that, when I go back, I may see my own country as others see it, but more wisely. It seems to me that a country could be best judged so by one who knows it well, yet has been so long withdrawn from it, and so familiar with other modes of life, as to see its outlines and features clearly.“

“You are right,” Marion said.

“I never knew how beautiful, how more than beautiful, American nature is till I had seen the famous scenes of Europe. One-half the superiority is association, and half the other half is because attention has been called to them by voices to which people listened. Our very climate is richer. Here nobody knows how beautiful the skies can be. They like sunshine, and rainy weather is for them always brutto tempo. The grandeur of a storm, the exquisite beauty of showery summer weather and of falling and fallen snow, they know nothing about. They endure the rainy season for the sake of the crops, scolding and shivering all the time. To watch with pleasure a direct, pelting, powerful rain would never enter their minds; and if they see you gazing at the most glorious clouds imaginable, it would be to them nothing but curioso. We do not need to go abroad for natural beauty.”

It was getting late and time to say good-night. A silence fell on them, and a sense of waiting. Then Mr. Vane said: “We have made a Novena together for the communion of this morning. May we not once more say our prayers together in thanksgiving?”

No one replied in words; but the Signora brought a prayer-book and arranged the lamp beside Mr. Vane. He obeyed her mute request, and for the first time, as head of the family, led the family devotions. Then they took a silent leave of each other.

32

NATALIE NARISCHKIN.^[8]

The name of Narischkin is in Russia like the name of Bourbon in France, Plantagenet or Stuart in Great Britain. The mother of Peter the Great was a Narischkin, and her baptismal name was Natalie. The family have always esteemed themselves too noble to accept even the highest titles, regarding their patronymic as a designation more honorable than that of prince. Madame Craven has just added to the list of her charming and extremely popular works a new one, which is a companion to the Sister’s Story, by writing the biography of a lady of the Narischkin family who was a Catholic and a Sister of Charity. Natalie was a friend of Alexandrine and Olga de la Ferronays. The narrative of her early life retraces the ground, familiar to so many, over which we have delightfully wandered in company with the fascinating group of elect souls, whose passage over the drear desert of our age has been like the waving of angels’ wings in a troubled atmosphere.

It seems scarcely correct to call Natalie Narischkin a convert. Her parents belonged to the Russian Church, and of course she was taught to regard herself as a member of the same. They resided, however, always in Italy, and Natalie was accustomed, in her childhood and youth, to associate freely with Catholic children and young people, and to accompany them to the churches and convents where they were wont to resort. Russian children receive infant communion, beginning with the day of their baptism, several times a year until they attain a proper age for confession, when there is a careful preparation and a solemn ceremony for the first adult communion, as with us. They are confirmed immediately after baptism. We are not told anything about Natalie’s receiving either infant or adult communion, but it is to be presumed that she was made to follow the usual practice, since there are Greek churches in Venice and other Italian cities. Her early associations were much more numerous, strong, and tender with the church of Italy and France than with the estranged church of her own nation. There was no difference in faith between herself and her Italian and French companions to make her sensible that the religion in which she was bred was different from the one in whose sacred rites she was continually taking part, at whose altars and shrines she frequently and devoutly worshipped. Even the peculiar ceremonies and forms of the Sclavonic and Greek rites were less familiar to her than those of the Latin rite. The only barrier between herself and her Catholic companions which could make Natalie sensibly feel a separation between them was her exclusion from participating in the sacraments administered by Catholic priests. This separation between priests and people professing the same faith, offering the same Sacrifice, administering and receiving the same sacraments, could only 33puzzle and surprise the mind of a child; but it requires a more mature understanding and complete knowledge to appreciate the obligation of renouncing all communion with a schismatical sect, however similar it may be to the true church. While Natalie was a child some of the little boys and girls with whom she played, particularly one little boy who became afterwards a martyr in China, used to assail her with controversy. Her older friends were more judicious, and waited patiently until her ripening intelligence and expanding spiritual life should prepare her for a more complete work of grace and a more perfect understanding of Catholic doctrine. In the instance of Madame Swetchine we see how much study and thought are necessary to produce in the mind of one who has grown up to maturity under the influences of the Russian Church a firm intellectual conviction that organic unity under the supremacy of the Roman See is essential to the being of the Catholic Church, and not merely the condition of its well-being and perfection. In Madame Elizabeth Gallitzin we discern how, in another way, national prejudice, and traditional hostility to what is regarded as anti-Russian, caused in her bosom a violent struggle against reason and conscience, even though the Catholic religion was that of her own mother. The case was wholly different with Natalie Narischkin. She did not think about the question of controversy at all, and was free from the national prejudices of a Russian. Her mother took no pains to instil them into her mind, or to place any obstacle in the way of the Catholic influences around her. She grew up, therefore, a Catholic, with only an external barrier between her inward sentiments and their full outward profession. The interior cravings of her spiritual life were the chief and real motive prompting her to pass over this barrier and find in the true church that which the broken, withered branch could not give. The requisite theological instruction in the grounds of the sentence of excision by which the Russian hierarchy is cut off from Catholic communion was a subsequent matter, and not at all difficult to one who was, like Natalie, intelligent, candid, and full of the spirit of the purest Catholic piety. There was really nothing in the way except the authority of her mother, whose chief motive of opposition was the fear of the emperor’s displeasure. When this obstacle was removed, Natalie easily and without an effort leaped over what was left of the external barrier.

We have anticipated, however, what belongs to a later period of her history. And going back to the time of her childhood, we will let Madame Craven herself describe the situation in which she was placed while she was growing up into womanhood. It will be noticed that Madame Craven speaks in the plural number, indicating that Natalie is not the only young Russian to whom her remarks apply. This will be understood when we explain that her sister Catharine sympathized with her in all her religious feelings, though she delayed, on account of her dread to encounter the opposition of her family, until a much later period her own formal abjuration.

“The entire childhood of these young girls had been passed at Naples, and they had been there environed by impressions which nothing in their Greek faith, no matter how lively it might have 34been, could counteract. The adoration of Jesus Christ, the veneration of the Holy Virgin and the saints, faith in the power of absolution and the real presence in the Blessed Sacrament, were the grand and fundamental doctrines which they had imbibed with their mother’s milk. Brought up at a distance from their own country, they might almost have believed themselves to be in the centre of their own religion, living as they were within the bounds of that great church which possesses all the gifts claimed by their own, with the added power of distributing and communicating them to all, without distinction of place, language, nation, or race. It is difficult to comprehend how any Russian whose soul is imbued with piety, on returning to his own country after having been brought up abroad, can find himself at ease in the bosom of Greek orthodoxy. In truth, it appears to us that the limits of a national church must seem very suffocating to any one who has felt, even for an instant, the pulsation of that universal life in the heart of the Catholic Church which is unconfined by mountains, rivers, or seas, which is contained within no barriers of any kind whatever, and bears the name of no particular nation, because it is the mother of all nations collectively. Therefore no one ever has been or ever will be able to fasten any denomination of this sort upon the only church who dares affirm that she alone possesses the truth in all its completeness. At the first view one would say that every church ought to make this claim under the penalty of being deprived of any reason for its existence. It is nevertheless true that only one loudly proclaims it; and those who hate as well as those who love the Catholic Church alike declare that she is a church in this respect singular among all others. Thus has she preserved through all ages a designation expressive of the idea realized in herself, and will preserve the same for all coming time! A multitude of her children have separated themselves from her, yet none of them have succeeded in despoiling her of the glorious title which suffices to make her recognized everywhere and by all. As for other churches or sects, when it is not the name of some man or nation which they substitute for her name, it is some kind of term or epithet which, even when it aims at giving a semblance of antiquity, betrays novelty in the very fact that it is necessary to employ it in order to be understood; and this is true in our own day just as much as it was in the time of St. Augustine. The overwhelming force of good sense and all the laws of human language determine that words express what they designate! At this day, as well as at that earlier period, neither friends nor enemies will ever give this grand name of CATHOLICS to any except those to whom it really belongs, and the same good sense proclaims as an indubitable fact which is that church whose children these are.

“Natalie had remained a long time without paying any attention to this controversy. She belonged all the while to the Catholic Church by all her pious habitudes, by all her childlike affections, finally and chiefly by the bond of the true sacraments which the Greek Church has had the infinite privilege of preserving, and which form a tie between ourselves and the Greeks whose value cannot be too highly estimated—a tie so powerful that even in one case where it is only imagined to have a real existence (i.e., with those Anglicans who persuade themselves that a chain wanting a multitude of links has not been broken) it has served in our days more than ever before to awaken in their hearts a sentiment inclining them to a nearer sympathy with our own. Belief in the truth of the words of Jesus Christ and in his real presence on the altar, the adoration and love of our Lord, the search after those who have possessed in the highest degree this faith and love, have opened the way by which a great number of souls have come to prostrate themselves before the tabernacles of the Catholic Church who had been previously outside of her visible fold, and had belonged to her only by virtue of their good faith and love of truth.

“With how much greater reason must one who belonged to the Greek Church have felt herself closely united to those whose faith was professed and whose practices were approved in respect to such a great number of points by her own church, which has even ventured to adopt the counsels of perfection and to speak of the 'spiritual life’ and of 'Christian perfection,’ after the manner of Catholics!

“But it is just here that she betrays 35her weakness; for when it is a practical question of undertaking and nourishing this spiritual life, where can she go to seek the living words, the sermons, the books, the apostolic men whom she requires? Where and from what source can one draw the vital force of this true and daily life, of this living life, if I may hazard the expression, always similar to itself, yet unceasingly renovated like the seasons of the year? Where can this vivifying influence be found, except in that same Catholic Church which, although it makes the mind bend under the necessary and salutary yoke of authority, never permits uniformity to engender tediousness, and possesses in its completeness that deposit a part of which the Greek Church suffered to escape on the day when it broke the bond of unity? Since then, although apparently rich, she has remained empty-handed; and while the Basils, the Athanasiuses, the Gregories, the Chrysostoms, and the numerous other holy and immortal doctors have had immortal successors in the Occident, the church of the Orient, once queen of eloquence and science, has become mute; and her children know not to-day whether she can speak or even write, since it is not given to them to hear her any more break silence; and, if they would warm up their piety by holy reading, and give their minds the sustenance they require, they are forced to have recourse to the Catholic Church, since it is there alone they can find their necessary aliment. Truly, we cannot help thinking that if the barrier which separates Greeks from Catholics were not upheld by hatred, it must fall down in an instant. This hatred is something which has no argument whatever in its justification, and which accepts, in behalf of the church which it covers as a shield of defence, the very conditions of death, immobility and silence, in lieu of a living existence.

“However this may be, and whatever more might be said on this vast and interesting subject, it cannot in any case be disputed that the divergences existing between us and the great Greek Church have nothing in common with those which separate us from Protestantism. Protestantism has tampered with and altered all our articles of faith, demolished the Christian mysteries most sacred to belief and dear to affection. It has retained neither the intercession of the saints, the worship of the Blessed Virgin, the sacraments of penance and the Holy Eucharist, nor the veneration of holy images. In fine, apart from the belief in the merits of our Saviour, of which every manifestation is severely restrained, there is nothing in common between Protestants and ourselves.^[9] On the contrary, we may say, in respect to the Greeks, that for the simple faithful the difference between them and ourselves is invisible, because they have retained so many things which assimilate their religion to ours, as affecting the mind, the heart, and even the senses. Therefore, for many among them, the barrier does not become sensible until they find themselves disposed to pass over it in order to satisfy the inward need which they experience of participating in the riches of that other church, which seems so like their own, yet differs from it in possessing really what the other offers in a vain semblance.

“What, then, must be the sentiments of a sincere, fervent, simple, and upright soul, already bathed in the light which radiates from the great mysteries of the faith, and touched by the infinite love of Jesus Christ revealed in them, when it discovers the nature of the obstacles which lie in her path?

“She finds all the articles of her faith more solemnly affirmed; all the practices which her piety demands more numerous and accessible; confession, absolution, communion—all is there; and must she refrain from satisfying her thirst for them?

“Is it credible that a soul thus thirsty for truth, faith, and love should be much disposed to recoil from the difficulty of accepting one word more in the confession of faith,^[10] or of recognizing the head of the universal church as the head of the church in the East as well as of that in the West? Again, is it credible that she will shrink back from the political obstacle, the greatest and most formidable of all—the only one, in fact, which she will find pain in overcoming and need courage to surmount?

“Such were the thoughts which importuned the mind of Natalie when she left Brussels, at the end of February, 1843, 36in order to return with her sisters to Paris, having resolved to ask the consent of her mother to her becoming a Catholic, and fully expecting that this permission would not be withheld.“

Natalie’s father died when she was fifteen years old. Evidently he had not felt any hostility to the Catholic Church, for he was a great admirer of the Jesuits. Madame Narischkin was not prejudiced, as is shown by the fact that she never at any time was averse to the perpetual intercourse kept up by her family, and especially by Natalie, with the most cultivated and devoted Catholics of Europe, such as the La Ferronays family, and never hindered her daughters from attending all kinds of services in Catholic churches. She undoubtedly looked on the Greek and Catholic churches as essentially identical with each other, and therefore could not see any reason for passing from the communion of the one to that of the other. She supposed that her daughter’s reasons were rather sentimental than conscientious. She naturally felt unwilling to have her take a step which would prevent her from ever again receiving communion at the same altar with the other members of the family. And she was, moreover, decidedly opposed to any act which would expose the family to the emperor’s displeasure. It is not to be wondered at, then, that she positively refused permission to Natalie to be received into the Catholic Church. Natalie was at this time twenty-three years of age, perfectly well educated, and fully instructed in the grounds of the distinctive, exclusive claim which is made by the Roman Church upon the obedience and submission of all baptized Christians. She was competent to decide for herself, and in possession of a complete right to act according to her conscience. It was thought proper, therefore, by the priest who was her spiritual director, and by her friends of the La Ferronays family, that she should be privately received into the church at Paris. An accident frustrated their plan, and Natalie was obliged to leave Paris with her mother without having accomplished her intention. The nuncio and other priests of high position at Paris, when they were informed about the matter, disapproved of the course which M. Aladel had advised, and reproved severely the ladies who had been concerned in the unsuccessful attempt to put it in execution.

Natalie accompanied her mother and sisters to Stuttgart, and a few months afterward to Venice. At her mother’s desire she had several conferences with a Greek priest, which served only to strengthen her in her well-formed and solid convictions. Nevertheless, she delayed her formal reception into the Catholic Church, waiting for a more favorable opportunity to accomplish this great desire of her heart. This opportunity came very soon, but in a way which was unexpected and, to her affectionate heart, most painful. During the summer of 1844 her mother was suddenly taken ill and died. The marriage of her two sisters, Mary and Elizabeth—both of whom had been some time before betrothed, the first to M. de Valois, the second to the Baron de Petz—was delayed for a year on account of this sad event, and the whole family was invited by M. Narischkin’s elder brother Alexis to return to Moscow and reside during the year of mourning in his house. Under these circumstances, Natalie resolved to act for herself, and she was accordingly received into 37the Catholic Church on the 15th of August, although none of her family were made acquainted with the fact. She accompanied her brother and sisters to Moscow, where they met with the most affectionate reception from their uncle and their other relatives. Nothing occurred to make any disclosure on her part necessary, until the time came for all the members of the family to make their Easter communion. In Russia this religious act, and all the preparations for it, are performed with so much publicity that it was impossible for Natalie to escape from it without observation. All the members of the family received the communion together at the same Mass, with the single exception of Natalie, who was nevertheless, as usual, present with the others, and observed the sad and serious look with which her uncle regarded her, as she remained in her place while all the rest of his family approached the altar to receive the sacrament. She now felt that the time had come when concealment was no longer possible, and naturally feared that a severe trial awaited her. It turned out, however, quite differently from what she had expected.

After their return from Mass her uncle sent for her, and in a most kind and paternal manner remonstrated with her on her omission of so grave and sacred a duty as the fulfilment of the precept of Paschal communion, which he attributed to indifference and tepidity, demanding of her, in a most affectionate manner, the reason which had induced her to abstain from communion. He added, at the same time, that he would much rather see her a Roman Catholic than indifferent to the obligations of religion. Natalie had listened to him with downcast eyes, in silence and trepidation. At these last words—prompted, perhaps, by some secret suspicion that her residence abroad had actually been the occasion of a change in her religion, and spoken with evident emotion and sadness—she opened her heart, and gave her venerable uncle a full and unreserved account of her conversion and of all the motives which led her to leave the communion of the Greek Church. When she looked up timidly, at the close of her recital to await her uncle’s answer, she saw his eyes filled with tears and fixed upon her with an expression of tenderness which banished all fear from her heart, and left upon it an indelible impression of love and gratitude. He opened his arms to embrace her affectionately, and assured her of his protection and unalterable kindness. Her maternal uncle, Count Strogonoff, a man whose religious character was both ardent and severe, and who was a thorough Russian of the old type in all his principles and sentiments, when he was informed of the truth, acted towards her in precisely the same manner, and even took pains to distinguish her from her sisters by special marks of affection. All her nearest relatives were informed of what had occurred, but the strictest secrecy was enjoined in respect to all others, for reasons which are obvious without any explanation. The only great trial which Natalie had to encounter, now that she was relieved of the pain and anxiety of keeping her secret from her nearest relatives, was the privation of all opportunity of going to Catholic churches and receiving the sacraments. Under the circumstances this was a privation she was compelled to endure patiently, and during 38the year she passed at Moscow she was only able to make one short visit, in company with some young friends, to the French chapel, on Holy Thursday, which was three days after the memorable interview with her uncle.

At the expiration of the year of mourning the young Narischkins returned to Italy for the nuptials of Mary and Elizabeth, and Natalie’s uncle arranged for her permanent residence with the latter, in order that she might be free to practise her religion without any embarrassment to herself or her family. She accordingly bade a final farewell to Russia, and with her temporary sojourn in her native country the great trial of her life was also terminated. We can easily imagine with what joy she again revisited Italy, which had been the home of her childhood; and on the occasion of this return Madame Craven’s genius has inspired her to write one of her happiest and most beautiful passages, which we cannot refrain from translating, although without any hope of preserving the delicate aroma of the original.

“We do not believe there is a person in the world who has once lived in Italy who does not cherish in his inmost soul the desire of returning there once more, or feel, when he again looks upon its beautiful sky, that wherever his native land may be, he has really come back to his own true country. For its beauty belongs to us as much as to those whose eyes behold it from the day when they are first opened to the light in infancy. It is no more their peculiar possession than it is our own; for to both alike it is only an irradiation from that supreme and essential beauty which is our common heritage and assured patrimony. This is doubtless the reason why we can never see the faintest reflection of this splendor of the eternal beauty without experiencing a sensation which causes the heart to dilate with joy and at the same time to repose in the tranquil security of possession. It seems to us that attentive reflection on what passes within us will show that, whatever degree of admiration any object of this world may awaken in our minds, even if it approaches to ecstasy, it is very rarely the case that we feel a positive surprise. Even if one who had never seen the glorious light and splendor of a happy clime were suddenly transported from the icy regions of the polar circle to the charming shores of the Bay of Naples, there is a latent image in the depths of the human heart, the original of which external things are the copy, whose presence makes one feel, even at the first glance on the sublime spectacle of the outward world, that all belongs to him and exists within his soul.

“This reflection suggests another. We shall doubtless experience something similar to this when we escape from this sphere of shadows and images and emerge into the region of eternal reality. Certainly our hearts will then be opened to receive those unknown enjoyments 'which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive.’ Nevertheless, I think it is allowable to suppose that, as we shall see the poor human form clothed in Jesus Christ with all the glory of the divinity, so we shall also find the reality of all those shadows which in this lower world charm our eyes and fascinate our hearts. Happy will it then be for those who have not suffered themselves to be captivated by these shadows, when they are able to exclaim in a transport of ineffable happiness: 'Behold at last those objects too beautiful and too transitory to be loved on the earth by our souls, because they must either suffer the loss of these or be lost themselves! Here they are—real, substantial, enduring, transfigured, unfading! We have found all those things which we desired and sought for, and amid all these possessions is our eternal abode!’”

Natalie found a very pleasant home with her brother-in-law, the Baron de Petz, during the next three years. It does not appear from the narrative whether he was a Catholic or a Greek in religion. He was certainly a most kind and affectionate brother, and her sisters were always loving and considerate, 39so that no alienation ever separated the hearts of her near relatives from her own so long as they lived. We shall see presently how noble and tender was the conduct of her brother Alexander. And we anticipate the regular order of events in order to mention in this connection another near relative, Prince Demidoff, whose affection for Natalie was extraordinary, and who acted with singular and admirable generosity not only toward herself, after she had become a Sister of Charity, but also to other members of the same congregation. While he was residing in Italy he established a spacious hospital at his own expense, which he confided to the care of these religious. At Paris he authorized Sister Natalie to draw on him without limit, at her own discretion, for charitable purposes. It is extremely delightful to witness and record actions of this kind, so honorable to human nature, and showing what a high degree of intellectual and moral refinement, as well as how much of a truly Christian and Catholic spirit, is to be found among a certain class of the ancient Russian nobility. And what a contrast do they present to the ignoble persecutions, the mean and petty defamations, to which so many even of those who attempt to assume the guise of Catholics have descended in respect to converts in England and the United States. We do not forget, however, that there are many instances among ourselves of a similar conduct to that of the Narischkins, as there are doubtless others of an opposite kind in Russian families under similar circumstances.

Natalie Narischkin, in the midst of the splendors, gayeties, and most refined enjoyments of the world, during the period of her peaceful, happy youth, ere the severe trials of life had cast their shadow upon her spirit, had been pious, reserved, pearl-like in her purity of character, always aspiring after Christian perfection. After she had begun to participate in all the spiritual advantages thrown open to her by her Catholic profession, her distaste for the world and attraction for the spiritual life increased rapidly, and an inclination toward the religious state gradually matured into a certain and settled vocation. Her friends made some opposition for a time, though not so much as is frequently encountered in the bosom of pious Catholic families. Her brother Alexander examined carefully her reasons and motives, and, being convinced that she was acting with prudence and deliberation, gave his free consent and the promise of his assistance in carrying out her intention, accompanied by the singular request that she would leave the choice of an order to his decision. She had made no choice herself, and when her brother selected the Congregation of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, she was quite satisfied. In fact, she had a predilection for the Convent of the Rue de Bac in Paris, which had been one of her places of favorite resort in former years. Her brother discussed the whole matter with M. Aladel, a Lazarist priest of Paris, and Natalie conferred not only with him but with several other experienced directors, who concurred in approving her vocation as a Sister of Charity. Here, accordingly, she entered, in her twenty-eighth year, and here she worked and suffered, as one saint among a thousand others, in an institute where heroism is as common as the ordinary virtues are elsewhere, 40and sanctity is the universal rule. During her religious life, which had twenty-six years of duration, she was first the secretary of the superior-general, and afterwards the superior of a small community in the Faubourg St. Germain. She died in 1874.

The narrative of Natalie’s religious life, enriched as it is with copious extracts from her letters and numerous personal anecdotes, is interesting and edifying as it is presented in the pages of Madame Craven’s biography. No doubt an English translation will soon place it within the reach of all our readers; and as it is precisely just one of those histories which is spoiled by condensation, we will not attempt to give it in an abridged form. Leaving aside, therefore, all further personal details, we shall confine our attention to that one aspect of our subject which has the most general interest and importance—viz., the position and attitude of the members of the national church of Russia in reference to the Catholic Church. As an illustration of this topic we have presented the history of the conversion of a Russian lady of high birth and education—one specimen of a number of equally choice souls whom the Russian Church has produced but has not been able to retain, and who are, we trust, the precursors of all the people of their nation in returning to the bosom of Catholic unity. Although Natalie Narischkin had lived so very little in her own country, she was nevertheless an ardent and patriotic Russian in her sentiments, and of course, as a well-instructed and devout Catholic, had very much at heart the religious welfare of her own nation. Among all the illustrious Russian converts, Count Schouvaloff, who became a Barnabite monk, was the most zealous in promoting the great work of the reconciliation of the Russian Church to the Holy See. Madame Craven tells us how enthusiastic Natalie was in her interest in the cause which this good man consecrated by the oblation of his own life as a sacrifice for its success—a sacrifice which he offered in obedience to the counsel of Pius IX., and which was accepted by God.

“When Father Schouvaloff—who, like herself, was a Russian, a convert, and devoted to the religious life—had given a definite form to this desire, and had founded an association of prayers in aid of this object which all Catholics were invited to join, there was not a single person in the world who responded more fervently to this appeal than Sister Natalie. The desire of propagating the truth, natural in the case of all who have embraced it, is particularly strong in those who have come from the Greek Church. To see the fatal barrier which separates the Eastern from the Western Church fall down, and to hear henceforth these two communions designated only by one common name: The Church!—no one else can comprehend the ardor of this desire in the hearts of those Russians who are animated both by the love of the truth and the love of their country.

“While we are on this topic we cannot help remarking how surprising are the tentative advances toward union between the Greek Church and Protestantism which we have recently witnessed. Such an alliance the clear mind of Natalie, even before her conversion, rejected with repugnance as impossible and absurd. Does not, in fact, the most simple reflection suffice to demonstrate that by uniting herself to the Catholic Church the Greek Church would preserve the traditions of her venerable antiquity together with the august dogmas which she holds, and would, at the same time, in ceasing to be local and becoming universal, recover the power of expansion and evangelization which she has lost by her schismatical isolation? In this case she might be compared to a princess of high lineage regaining, by a return to the bosom 41of the family to which she belonged, the royal rank from which she had fallen. But, in truth, to make a union with Protestantism would be for her the worst of misalliances, for she would then resemble a princess marrying a parvenu and with the utmost levity renouncing all the rights of her high birth and illustrious descent.”

Some of our readers may find it difficult to understand the anomalous position in which the Russian Church stands, so completely different from that of any of our Western sects, and requiring only the one act necessary for its corporate reunion to the Catholic body for its rectification, and yet so completely severed from the true church in its actual state that it is not a branch, a limb, or any kind of part or member of the same, but only a sect, completely outside of the universal church. Some Catholics may suppose the Russian Church in a worse condition than it is in reality. They may not understand that its priesthood and sacraments are any better than those of the English or Scandinavian churches, which have an outward form of episcopal constitution. Or, if better informed on this head, they may ascribe to it heresy, and regard some of its differences of rite and discipline as vitiating essentially the Catholic order. On the other hand, these misapprehensions being set aside, and the likeness of the Russian Church to the Catholic Church clearly understood, they might find it difficult to perceive that essential difference which, as Madame Craven remarks with truth, is to most of the Russian laity invisible. Still more will a Protestant having a tincture of Catholic opinions and sentiments fail to see why a member of the Russian Church should be convinced of the imperative obligation of abjuring the Greek schism and passing over to the communion of the Roman Church.

The question of heresy is easily settled by the way of authority. We have only to inquire, therefore, whether the Holy See has ever condemned the adherents of the schism begun by Photius and renewed by Michael Cerularius, of heresy as well as schism, and whether the standard authors in theology consider them as heretics in view of their ecclesiastical position and in virtue of general principles, although no formal judgment has been pronounced by the Holy See. It is certain that no such formal sentence has ever been pronounced by the Holy See. The Nestorian and Monophysite sects of the East have been formally condemned as heretical. But the soi-disant Orthodox Church likewise condemns these and all other heretical sects condemned by the Roman Church before the time of the schism. At the Council of Florence the Greeks were not judged to have professed any heresy, the Council of Trent was specially careful to abstain from any such condemnation, and the Council of the Vatican equally refrained from it. The same is true of all the official pronouncements of the popes. In the exercise of practical discipline, when it is a question of reconciling Greeks, whether they are in holy orders or laymen, they are treated as schismatics, but not as heretics. Theologians also, in treating of the doctrine of the several national churches in communion with the schismatical patriarchate of Constantinople, which they hold in common as their profession of faith, regard it as orthodox, conformed to the doctrine of the Catholic Church, and consequently free 42from any mixture of heresy. The only doctrines in regard to which any one could suppose the Greek Church to be heretical are the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son, and the supreme, infallible authority of the Pope. The Greek Church has never, by any solemn, synodical act, denied the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son. The omission of the Filio-que from the Creed is not in itself equivalent to such a denial, and the Roman Church has never required the Orientals to insert it as a condition of communion. Neither has the Greek Church ever by any solemn act denied the supremacy and infallibility of the Pope. The liturgical books, and specifically those of the Russian Church, contain abundant testimonies to the Catholic doctrine on this head. The heretical doctrines of individuals, whether prelates, priests, or laymen, are therefore their own personal heresies, and not the doctrine of the public formularies of faith, which remain just what they were at the time of the separation. The only conciliar decrees of a dogmatic character which have been enacted since that time by a synod which could be regarded as representing the so-called Orthodox Church are those of the Synod of Bethlehem, in which the principal heresies of Protestantism are condemned. There is only one essential vice, therefore, in the constitution of the Russo-Greek Church which needs to be healed, and that is its state of rebellion against the See of Peter. The one act of abjuring the schism implies and involves in it the recognition of all the decrees of the Holy See and of œcumenical councils during the period which has elapsed since the rebellion of Photius, by virtue of the doctrine of the infallibility of the Catholic Church which the Greek Church professes.