Volume 25 / Part 2 — ALBA’S DREAM. BY THE AUTHOR OF “ARE YOU MY WIFE?” “A SALON IN PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” ETC. PART II. (continued 2)

In all these churches the exterior beauty has been more or less sacrificed to interior ornament and decoration, Pugin preferring to devote all the money possible to beautifying those parts which were most closely connected with the presence of his God, when the funds did not permit him to adorn fully both exterior and interior. This has often led his critics to misjudge his capacity as an architect; even Sir C. Eastlake falls into this error, and, though a sincere admirer of Pugin, does not hesitate to assert that “of constructive science he probably knew but little.” That his greatest power lay in ornament and detail may no doubt be true; still, we are fully convinced that had he found the same opportunities of displaying his knowledge as a scientific architect, and had he not been trammelled by the constant necessity to keep down expense, he would have amply proved to the world how unfounded were these accusations.

In comparing Pugin with the architects who have succeeded him people often forget the difficulties he had to contend against. He had to revive and educate the whole 650series of artisans whose combined labors are required to construct the smallest Gothic edifice—sculptors, carvers, iron-workers, painters, and decorators. When he began his career as a practical architect he had to design every smallest item required for his buildings, and, what is more, often personally to superintend their manufacture; a lock, a screw, a nail of correct pointed design were then things that had no existence.

If we take up now a book of that period, we can scarcely believe that ignorance and absurdity could go so far as to call Gothic the designs we see there depicted under that appellation. It is solely to Pugin’s untiring energy, to his conscientious love of his art, and to his wonderful fertility of invention—gifts which even his adversaries cannot deny him—that we owe the change that has been wrought in a few years.

The important progress in metal work, which now places at the disposal of the architect and builder material and designs almost equalling the best products of the middle ages, is completely due to him; in this, as in another long-lost branch of art—glass-staining—he found in Mr. J. Hardman, of Birmingham, one thoroughly competent by his practical knowledge and refined taste to assist him in carrying out his reforms.

How many other branches of industry, connected directly or indirectly with mediæval art, could be mentioned in which the influence of Pugin’s labors can be traced!—the production of encaustic tiles, silk embroidery, wood-carving, the manufacture of church plate and furniture of all kinds, even household articles and jewelry. Sir C. Eastlake truly remarks: “Those establishments which are known in London as ecclesiastical warehouses owe their existence and their source of profit to Pugin’s exertions in the cause of rubrical propriety.”^[108] He might have added with equal truth that the many beautiful objects we admire in them owe their existence to the principles he established by his writings and to the endless models which his unrivalled facility of invention placed at the disposal of the public.

If a proof were wanting of the hold that the revival of which Pugin was the leading spirit was taking on public opinion, it is the fact that a Parliamentary committee, in drawing up the terms of the competition for the plans of the new Houses of Parliament, stipulated that the designs should be Gothic or Elizabethan. It has often been regretted that Pugin did not take part in this competition, and his reasons for not doing so have never been quite satisfactorily explained.

Barry, the architect selected for the new buildings, showed his appreciation of Pugin’s capabilities and his esteem for his talents by applying to him for designs for all the important interior decorations and furniture. The beauty of these parts shows how well suited he was for the task; many consider them the most perfect parts of the edifice, the exterior, notwithstanding its real merits, having numerous faults—some of them, it is true, inherent to the style adopted—Tudor or perpendicular.

Besides the many churches and other religious edifices which Pugin designed, he devoted considerable attention to domestic architecture; and among the best specimens he left may be mentioned Bilton Grange, Adare Manor, and Scarisbrick 651Hall, Chirk Castle and Alton Towers; the last two he only restored and altered. But perhaps his happiest effort in this style was his own house at Ramsgate, which is, in every detail, a perfect specimen of a mediæval residence, strongly illustrating how deeply imbued Pugin was with the spirit and traditions of the past. So thoroughly Gothic were all his feelings and tastes that we firmly believe it would have been impossible for him to design a building in any other style.

With Pugin’s death, which occurred in 1854, we shall terminate this short sketch of one of the most wonderful revivals of the present age. We have told how Gothic architecture became extinct as a practical art, how its theory was forgotten and misunderstood for centuries, its very name kept in remembrance only by a few rare lovers of antiquity. We have traced the first dawn of a change in public taste, originated by the serious works of men versed in the history of ancient art, and inspired by a love of its grand productions.

In what a different position we leave it now! The master spirit that had breathed a new life into its almost inanimate form has passed away; his mortal remains are sleeping in the hallowed transept of that beautiful church at Ramsgate, the designing and decorating of which had been to him such a labor of love; but, unlike many reformers, he had lived to see his cherished dreams realized; he had lived to see the mystic steeple and the high pitched roof once more ascend to heaven from the crowded cities and the wooded fields of his country; he had lived to see a long array of distinguished names consecrate their gifts to that one style he had loved and for which he had labored.

ALONG THE FOOT OF THE PYRENEES.

We followed the old Roman way along the foot of the Pyrenees—a delightful route, picturesque on one side and fair on the other, and everywhere abounding in historic and legendary memories. Every age has left its impress here, as every geological period has left its strata in the mountains. Many of the cultivated hills are crowned with the ruins of feudal times. The plains are blooming with a thousand traditions and marvellous events that have sprung up from the contests with the Moors in the eighth century. Numerous remains of ancient art are constantly coming to light from the soil to prove that, during the Roman occupancy of the land, many wealthy patricians established themselves in this region, at once attractive to the eye and favorable to health. The Visigoths also, who once held possession of the country, have left behind them memorials of their barbarity in the martyrs who are still honored; and the Huguenots and Revolutionists ruined churches and cloisters that are still deplored.

At length we came to Martres-Tolosanes—the ancient Callagorris—an industrious place on the left bank of the Garonne containing about two thousand inhabitants. Clouds of smoke hover over it by day, and flames and sparks stream up at night, from the numerous 652potteries which supply all the neighboring region with dishes and tiles, and pave all the by-roads with broken crockery. The streets are narrow, and the begrimed houses seem inclined to stray off on the road to Spain, as if to breathe the pure mountain air. There is an interesting old church here that was consecrated in the year 1309. The baptismal font is an ancient sarcophagus, set up on four pillars, its sides divided by colonnettes, between which are holy emblems and other carvings. In one chapel there is a sculptured retable over the altar, with the shrine of St. Vidian supported by chained Moors—not covered with precious stones, or a work of art, like so many of the shrines of Italy, but a mere urn of gilded wood. On great festivals this is taken down and placed before the grating of the sanctuary, surrounded by lights and flowers. The bust of the saint is placed above it, the head shaded by nodding white plumes to give it a martial character, in view of St. Vidian’s achievements, the face painted more or less after nature, the shoulders covered with a gilded mantle of imperial fashion, and the neck adorned with a collar, or necklace, of blue and white crystal—probably the offering of some devout peasant. In another chapel, on such days likewise full of flowers and tapers, is St. Vidian’s ivory comb exposed in a kind of monstrance, as if the object of particular veneration. It is rudely carved, and the teeth which used to disentangle the long blond locks of the warrior after battle are of portentous size and length, and jagged from the conflict. But those were not days of gentle measures. This comb is of considerable celebrity in the country, not merely on account of its original use, but also because of the curious tale that hangs around it.

In the golden ages, when kind Heaven directly intervened in human affairs more frequently than is thought to be the case now, and did not suffer sacrilegious deeds to go unpunished, a peasant woman of the neighboring canton of Cazères, who had come to Martres to attend St. Vidian’s fair, went into the church to pay her devotions at the shrine, and, finding it empty, was induced by some diabolical inspiration to steal the wondrous comb, which was not then kept under glass as now. She hid it under her scarlet capulet, and, rejoining her husband at the market-place, set out for home. The afternoon was drawing to a close. Some rays of the declining sun still brightened the gray tower of Mauran among the mountain oaks, but the evening shadows had begun to gather in the valley below. Accordingly, they hurried along the road that bordered the river, the irons on their shoes clattering over the stones and giving out an occasional spark. The woman’s feet, however, often faltered, and, contrary to custom, her tongue was mute. But this was no affliction to her husband, and he pretended not to observe it. At length, on crossing the boundary that separates Martres from Cazères, he suddenly found himself alone, and, hearing a cry, looked around. His wife remained fastened on the line, as if by some invisible influence, with one foot in the parish of Martres and the other in that of Cazères, without the power of moving. He hurried back to her assistance, but, in spite of herculean efforts, he could not move her an inch, more than if she had been Lot’s wife. Night was now coming on fast. Not a ray of the 653sun was left on St. Michael’s tower, and they were only half way home. A cart from the mountains came by, drawn by three cows, and he begged the driver’s assistance. The woman seized hold of the cart. The driver goaded the cows. They were usually gentle and tractable, as becomes the female nature, but they now set off as if suddenly gone mad, leaving the poor woman behind, her arms nearly dislocated with her efforts, but her feet still glued to the ground. Then came along some Spaniards with their mules covered with gay tassels and bells. New efforts were made to remove her. She clung desperately to bridle and harness, but the mules so reared and kicked that she was obliged to give up the attempt. “Certainly the devil must have a hand in this,” said the husband. The woman rent the mountains with her cries, and at length was forced to confess the deed she had done. It was evidently a case in which the spiritual powers alone could be of any avail, and, as she could no more go back than forward, her husband sent to Martres to make known the case and ask the benefit of the clergy. As St. Vidian would have it, they were all keeping solemn vigil at his shrine, and, taking the torches that stood around it, they came hastening out with cross and banner, and as soon as they took possession of the relic the woman had stolen, her feet recovered their liberty. After this the comb was kept under lock and key, and, at a later day, was placed in the reliquary where it now is. Of course so stupendous an event caused a great sensation in the valley, which had not been so stirred up since the Norman invasion, and made the comb not only an object of universal curiosity but of increased veneration. The legend is related to this day. It is pretended that the women of Cazères are a little spiteful about it, and dress their shining black hair with much more care than their neighbors at Martres, probably to show they have no need of the comb of St. Vidian.

St. Vidian figures everywhere in this region. Charming legends, handed down from father to son for ages, have thrown quite a veil of poetry over numberless places. They are not very clear as to the precise place of the saint’s birth, but they are quite positive that he was one of the preux who served under Charlemagne, and had even a dash of imperial blood in his veins. In his youth he became a hostage for his father, who had been taken prisoner by the Basques of Luceria, then idolaters. They sold the young Frank as a slave. An Englishman bought and adopted him, and as soon as Vidian was sufficiently inured to the use of arms he organized a crusade against Luceria, which he pillaged and completely destroyed. Of course such a feat recommended him to his imperial kinsman. Charlemagne invited him to his court and created him duke. About this time the Saracens crossed the Pyrenees and began to ravage the plain of Toulouse. Vidian joined the imperial hosts who came to the rescue of the land, and entrenched himself with his followers at Martres, then called Angonia. He defended the place so bravely against the enemy that for a while it was supposed saved, but, surprised by an ambuscade near a fountain where he had gone to stanch his wounds, he was slain after a stout resistance, and the town taken and devastated. When it rose from its ruins it took the 654name of Martres in memory of those who were martyred in trying to defend it.

It is certain that all this part of France was once overrun by the Moors. They, and the Normans after them, probably destroyed not only most of the ancient Christian churches, but the monuments left by the Romans. History has not recorded all the efforts made to repel them, but a confused memory of the struggle has been left in the minds of the people, and, colored by time and the warm southern imagination, these memories have become a genuine cycle of poetic traditions, not the less founded on fact because only written with the sword and blood of their ancestors.

The country around Martres is full of character and beauty. The Garonne, fresh from its mountain sources, winds through the verdant plain. To the south are broad terraces and wooded hills, and behind is the grand barrier of mountains, their summits all crystal in the morning light, and at evening all rose and amethyst. No wonder the Romans thought it rivalled Italy, and established themselves here. On one of the neighboring plateaus have been found the remains of a magnificent Roman villa that must have belonged to some wealthy person of luxurious and cultivated tastes, to judge by the objects brought to light from time to time. In 1826 a vault was found by a laborer, and excavations were systematically made which led to the discovery of sumptuous apartments paved with mosaics and marble, with remains of columns, statues, and bas-reliefs, and fine bathing-rooms with furnaces and earthen pipes, and all the accessories of Roman luxury. Among the works of art that have been found here are about forty busts and medallions of Roman emperors and empresses from Augustus down; a white marble statue of a reclining naiad; the beautiful head of another statue called the Venus de Martres; medallions of Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Cybele, and Atys; large bas-reliefs of Serapis, the labors of Hercules, etc., and several bronzes. These form quite a gallery of ancient art in the museum at Toulouse, where we saw them in the old cloister of Augustinian friars.

Beneath one of the plateaus is a pretty fountain with a cross near it, in the midst of gentle undulations of verdure, shaded by a grove. Here St. Vidian had his encounter with the Moors and was slain. The pebbles in the spring are said to be still stained with his blood. Every year his exploits are celebrated here by a mimic battle between the Moors and Christians, in which nearly all the male population take part. It is said the brilliant costume of the Saracens is so attractive to the younger portion that they show a lamentable disposition to enter the service of the infidel. However, by dint of cautious measures, both armies are kept about equal. They consist of nearly one hundred and twenty-five men each, of whom fifty are horsemen. The Moorish cavaliers wear red and white turbans with silver trimmings; green stomachers adorned with a yellow crescent; orange coats turned out with red facings; girdles of scarlet silk; and blue pantaloons of Oriental amplitude. It will at once be perceived that nothing could be more gorgeous. The infantry are less pretentious. They content themselves with the white pantaloons of the French hussar, but make up for this with bright orange vests a Mameluke might 655envy. The Christian knights wear a black pasteboard helmet with a silver cross on the front, a blue tunic, and a tin cuirass that is quite dazzling in the sun. The foot-soldiers are dressed in gray, with blue caps, and a silver cross on their breasts. Both armies are furnished with tall lances, and each has its standard. That of the Moors is green and orange. On it gleams the ominous silver crescent. The Christians’ is blue and bears the redoubtable figure of St. Vidian.

The battle takes place on St. Vidian’s day. The relics of the saint are exposed in the church. High Mass is celebrated with the utmost pomp. Even the followers of Islam are so unfaithful to their traditional intolerance as to attend and present arms at the Elevation of the Host, in utter disregard of the Prophet. Mass over, the clergy and people go in procession to the miraculous fount, bearing the shrine and chanting the hymn of St. Vidian. There they bathe the bust of the saint in memory of his wounds. These traditional services concluded, the military ardor of the soldiers begins to assert itself. The two armies draw up on the neighboring field. Prodigious acoustic performances are made on the drum of the commune. Military evolutions begin. The banners fly. Red, yellow, and blue uniforms flash across the green field. The cavaliers show themselves true paladins. Such curveting and prancing have not been seen since the days of Charlemagne and Haroun al Raschid; at least, on such steeds—mostly farm horses the worse for wear. Sometimes the contest becomes too warm and real. However, their ardor never lasts longer than is warranted by tradition. The Moorish flag is invariably captured by the Christians, and the battle-field deserted till the next anniversary of St. Vidian’s martyrdom.

Vigilantius, the first heresiarch that troubled the peace of Christian Gaul, was a native of Callagorris. He was of a roving turn and a lover of novelty. In early life he crossed over into Spain and there became an inn-keeper. Then we hear of him as a priest at Barcelona. He made the acquaintance of St. Paulinus (afterwards of Nola) in Spain, who was induced to give him a letter of recommendation to St. Jerome. Furnished with this, he went to the Holy Land, but there he took sides with the enemies of St. Jerome and attacked the monastic life, celibacy of the clergy, the veneration of relics, the use of candles in the daytime, etc. St. Jerome, sarcastically referring to his original calling, told him the faculty of testing wine and that of expounding the Scriptures were not quite the same, and advised him to acquire the elements of grammar and the other sciences, and then learn to be silent. His countrymen do not seem to have been influenced by his example, however, but have always been remarkable for their confidence in the saints and veneration for relics.

Five or six miles beyond Martres we came to St. Martory, so named from a holy monk of the East whose beautiful legend is related by St. Gregory. One evening this saint, on his way to a neighboring monastery, overtook a poor leper forced by fatigue and disease to rest by the wayside. Filled with intense compassion, St. Martyri, as he is otherwise called, spread his cloak on the ground, placed the leper thereon, and, carefully wrapping 656him up, took him on his shoulder and proceeded on his way. The abbot of the monastery, seeing him coming, cried: “Hasten, my brethren, to open the gates. Behold Brother Martyri coming, bearing the Lord.” While they were gone to execute his command the leper descended from the good monk’s shoulders, and, taking the form under which the Redeemer is usually represented, he addressed him in these words: “Martyri, thou hast had pity on me on earth; I will glorify thee in heaven.” And, while the monk was gazing at him in speechless amazement, he ascended to heaven. When St. Martyri entered, the abbot asked what he had done with the person he was carrying. The saint replied: “Oh! had I known who he was, I would have held him by the feet!” And he related how light he had seemed on the way. The body of St. Martory is still revered in the church.

Not long after leaving St. Martory we came in sight of the towers of St. Gaudens at one end of a broad plateau, once the place of a Roman encampment. Behind it are the mountains that enclose the beautiful valleys of Aure and Campan, the Pic du Midi, and the whole of the mighty chain that binds sea to sea. Below is a vast plain, fertile and smiling, supposed to be the bed of a lake in which the waters of the Neste once mingled with those of the Garonne. On the other side are to be seen the ancient thermal place of Labarthe, overlooked by a feudal tower and a village that dates from the fourth century, called Valentine, in honor, it is said, of Valentinian II., who was assassinated in Gaul Narbonnaise in 392. Here and there in the fields are found remains that attest the importance of the place under the Romans—fragments of tombs, bas-reliefs, and antique vases. At one corner of the church of Valentine is the head of a Roman soldier with his helmet on, and near it a white marble urn. Inserted in the wall of the church is a marble slab with a Latin inscription, thought to be of the fourth century, which may be thus rudely rendered:

“Nymphius, whose limbs are cold and stiff in eternal sleep, reposes here. His soul is in heaven. It contemplates the stars, while his body is left to the repose of the tomb. His faith dispelled the darkness that seemed to envelop it. O Nymphius! the renown of thy virtues raised thee to the very stars and placed thee in the zenith. Thou art immortal, and thy glory will be perpetuated in ages to come. The province honors thee as its father. The entire population made vows for the preservation of thy life. At the celebration of the games due to thy munificence the spectators on the gradations of the arena testified their joy by acclamations. Once thy beloved country, at thy command, assembled its magistrates and spoke worthily by thy lips. Now our cities, deprived of thee, are plunged in mourning, and the senators, in consternation, are incapable of action. They are like the human body that, deprived of its head, falls lifeless and inert, or a flock without its shepherd that knows not which way to direct its steps. Serena, thy spouse, abandoned to grief, erects this monument to thee, and finds in this pious duty a slight solace for her pain. Thy companion for eight lustres, she only thought and acted by thee. At thy side life seemed sweet. Now, abandoned to her sorrow, she sighs for the eternal 657life, hoping that which she now possesses may be brief.”

What a tale might be woven out of the epitaph of this old Roman, who died fourteen hundred years ago in this remote valley—made up of domestic bliss, political honors, the happiness that virtue alone can bestow, and an untimely death mourned by the public and, above all, by the gentle-hearted Serena!

The Romans knew how to choose their sites. Nothing can exceed the charm of this region, especially in the month of May, when we visited it for the first time. The fresh valleys, the clear streams, the unexpected views at every turn, the harmonious outlines of the landscape, are a perpetual delight to the eye. The fertile plain of Valentine especially is so lovely that all the mountain-tops seem crowding together to gaze at and admire it, and they send down their purest streams to preserve its freshness and beauty.

On the sides of the plateau that overlooks Valentine a young shepherd, named Gaudentius, led his flocks to pasture in the latter part of the fifth century. His mother, a holy woman of the name of Quitterie, had brought him up in the practice of the most fervent piety. The country at that time was in possession of the Visigoths. Euric had succeeded to the throne by slaying his brother, Theodoric II. He was a man of great military genius, who extended his conquests in Gaul from the Loire beyond the Rhone, and carried war beyond the Pyrenees with so much success that he conquered most of the Peninsula. Toulouse was thus made the capital of an immense empire that extended from Provence to Andalusia. Euric was a fanatical Arian, and, attributing his success to his fidelity to his principles, he began a violent persecution of the Catholics, though they constituted a large part of his subjects. Executioners were frequently his missionaries, and one of these summarily opened heaven to the young shepherd Gaudentius, who, refusing to apostatize, gave a last look at his mother, who encouraged him, and submitted to martyrdom. His remains were carefully transported to the place of his residence, and, after the downfall of the Visigoths, an oratory was erected over his grave.

Such miracles were now wrought through the instrumentality of St. Gaudens that his fame extended all through the country, people came to live around his tomb, and a village soon sprang up that took his name. More than a thousand years passed away without diminishing the affluence at St. Gaudens’ tomb, but in the sixteenth century the town was taken by Montgomery the Huguenot, the church stripped of its ornaments and greatly injured, the statues broken, the tombs desecrated, and most of St. Gaudens’ relics thrown into the flames. But that was a way of reforming the Huguenots had.

“N’est ce pas réformer, quand on trouve une église

Trop riche, lui ravir ses trésors anciens?”

says the old Plainte de la Guienne of 1577 with a bitterness that is quite natural. The bullet-holes made in the church are still pointed out. This is a noteworthy building of the Romanesque style, with round arches, clustered columns, and carved capitals. Each aisle ends in a chapel, and a choir is at the apsis. Over the altar is a statue of the Virgin that, before the Revolution, belonged to the neighboring abbey of Bonnefont, now completely destroyed. This 658statue is the production of Pierre Lucas, the founder of the academy of art at Toulouse. A priory was formerly attached to the church of St. Gaudens, dependent on the abbey of St. Sernin at Toulouse, but it has been totally destroyed. The old cloister of Pyrenean marble, built by Bernard I., Bishop of Comminges, and of the race of its counts, has also been destroyed. Of the tombs that once lined the arcades, only one here and there is left, with its touching mediæval inscription, and perchance some consoling emblem of religion, such as a cluster of grapes on a vine branch, recalling the Saviour’s words, “I am the vine and ye are the branches”; the monogram of Christ; the Alpha and Omega, etc.—symbols of hope graven on the cold marble tomb. And there is an ancient portal over which used to hang the horseshoes of Abderahman’s steed, which, according to tradition, plunged and reared when his master attempted to pillage the shrine of St. Gaudens, and thus lost its shoes. The horse of Montgomery seems to have been of a coarser nature, and as insensible as his ferocious owner to the spiritual influences around the tombs of the saints.

There is a kind of mournful pleasure in sitting down among the ruins of such old cloisters, listening to the echoes of past times, and trying to decipher the pious inscriptions on the tombstones among the rank grass, and to divine the history of those who lie beneath—once centres of fond affection, but now forgotten and unknown. Through the rifts in the wall is seen the peaceful rural valley, with the Pyrenees in the distance, resplendent in the light; and the contrast between all that is graceful and sublime in nature, and the desolation of this spot once beautified by art and hallowed by religion, is exceedingly touching. How peaceful, how religious, this cloister must have been, where paced the silent, prayerful monk among the tombs! And there is a sacredness in its present desolation that appeals to the heart; if the solemnity of the ancient arches is wanting, there is no lack of beauty in the lovely vistas among the picturesque mountains and delicious valleys.

St. Gaudens is a place of four or five thousand inhabitants, with old blackened houses full of industry. The country around is densely populated, and at certain seasons many go into the neighboring districts to add to their slender earnings. The young men have a commercial taste, and all through the Pyrenees you meet peddlers and colporteurs from St. Gaudens, hawking their small wares with amusing pertinacity. The girls, too, in harvest-time descend to the neighboring valleys to offer their services, and there are many popular rondeaux that allude to them.

“Las fillos de Sen Gaoudens nou n’an d’argent,

Las qui nou n’an qu’en bouléren:

Faridoundaino, qu’en bouléren.”

—The girls of St. Gaudens are penniless, and those without money desire it. Tum-te-tum, yes, desire it.

“Aou pays bach, anem! anem!

Coillé d’argent!

En sega blat et dailla hen,

Faridoundaino, n’en gagnaren.”

—Down to the valleys let us go, go! Money to seek, by reaping grain and raking hay. Tum-te-tum, we shall gain some.

On the outskirts of St. Gaudens is shown the house where St. Raymond was born—the celebrated founder of the order of Calatrava, which rendered such glorious services 659to Spain, and thereby to all Christendom, in the struggle with the Moors. It is a humble birthplace for one who gathered under his banner the haughtiest grandees of Spain. His companion, Durand, was also a native of St. Gaudens. They both became monks at the noted abbey of Escale-Dieu, where they inured themselves by austerities for the mission Providence had in reserve for them. There would seem to be but little in common with the peaceful pursuits of the Cistercians and the valiant exploits of the knights of Calatrava, to those who know nothing of the bracing discipline of monastic life.

Not far from St. Gaudens is the chapel of Notre Dame du Bout-du-Puy—a place of pilgrimage, enriched with indulgences by Pope Innocent XI. It is under the continual guardianship of a hermit. This Madonna is particularly invoked by people in danger of death. Among the ex votos on the wall is the picture of a child carried away by a neighboring torrent, the mother kneeling on the bank with eyes and arms raised towards heaven, where Mary appears, commanding the waves to bring back her child.

We have mentioned the tower of Labarthe. The viscounts of this name were the lords of the Four Valleys for several centuries, and played an important rôle in the history of Bigorre. The fifth Vicomte de Labarthe married the grand-daughter of Eudoxia, the daughter of Emmanuel Comnenus, Emperor of Constantinople, who died at Rome in the odor of sanctity, and was buried at the church of the Vatican. Geraud de Labarthe, Archbishop of Auch, put on the cross and accompanied Richard the Lion-hearted to the Holy Land as the prefect of his army. One of the glories of this race is Marshal Paul de Labarthe, Lord of Thermes, who lived in the sixteenth century and saw six kings succeed each other on the throne of France. He took part in the siege of Naples, and, made prisoner by the corsairs, endured a severe captivity for two years. He afterwards distinguished himself in the Piedmont war and fighting in Scotland against the English, and was finally created Marshal of France. He was so noted for his humanity that the Huguenots said he could not hold his place as governor of Paris because he was “too little inclined to slaughter.” Some of his descendants still live in Bigorre.

On our way to Bagnères de Bigorre we stopped to visit the abbey of Escale-Dieu, at the bottom of a deep valley enclosed among the hills. The name is derived from Scala Dei—the ladder of God—a ladder to aid man in his ascent to heaven! No name could be more appropriate for a monastery where, as Wordsworth says, paraphrasing the words of St. Bernard:

“Man more purely lives; less oft doth fall;

More promptly rises; walks with nicer tread;

More safely rests; dies happier; is freed

Earlier from cleansing fires; and gains withal

A brighter crown.”

This abbey is on the banks of the Arros, a river noted for its impetuous character and sudden overflows. It has its source in the valley of Oueil, the ancient Vallis Oculi—so called from its shape, where it is said three barons once could breakfast together without leaving their own domains. Near by is a little hamlet called Mayleu, on the edge of a torrent, where on stormy nights pale lights are said to wave to and fro on the current, which the mountaineers say are 660caused by the soul of an old miser that agitates the waters—emblem of his restless life, spent in grasping the goods of others with insatiable avidity. His influence surely extends all along the Arros.

The valley of Escale-Dieu was given to a community of Cistercian monks in the twelfth century by Beatrix, Countess of Bigorre, in order, as she says in her charter, that she “might be accounted as a sister in Christ by the brethren of Escale-Dieu in their watchings, and fastings, and prayers, and obtain the redemption of her soul, her husband’s, her father, Centulle’s, her mother, Amable’s, and other relatives’.” The Cistercians were famous as agriculturists, and in bestowing on them large tracts of land the old lords of the middle ages ensured the best means of bringing the country under cultivation and humanizing the inhabitants. The monks built a church here under the invocation of SS. Peter and Paul, which was consecrated October 23, 1142, by the Archbishop of Auch, in the presence of the Countess Beatrix and her husband, many abbots and neighboring lords, and an immense crowd of people. This church became the St. Denis of the counts of Bigorre, who doubtless thought to rest here in peace till the end of the world; for the abbey was at that time so remote from the highways of travel that its solitude was almost unbroken. The Countess Beatrix was one of the first to be buried here, but her tomb was broken open at the Revolution, and the remains, spared by centuries, fell into dust at contact with the air.

The first abbot of Escale-Dieu was a son of the Vicomte de Labarthe, and his successors, over forty in number, were mostly from the great families of the country. The house was immediately dependent on the Holy See, and the Sovereign Pontiff forbade any one to rob, burn, make any arrest, commit murder, or do any violence on its domains.

One peculiarity about its history is that, contrary to most great monasteries, no town or village ever sprang up around it. It remained solitary in its valley, studying “the secret lore of rural things” and pruning the wings of Contemplation, unconscious that Providence was to give it a mission in the world seemingly incompatible with the spirit of the order. The monks became so numerous, however, that two colonies were sent across the Pyrenees under the charge of St. Raymond and Durand, to found the abbeys of Yergo and Fitero. In 1147 the town of Calatrava, the bulwark of Andalusia, was taken by Alfonso, King of Castile, and entrusted to the care of the Knights Templars, who held it for ten years. Then the success of the Moors made them fear they would not be able to defend it any longer, and they resigned the place to the king. The latter, embarrassed at having it thrown on his hands, offered it to any one who would undertake its defence. St. Raymond, indignant to see knights, vowed to the defence of religion, thus abandon the post of danger, asked the honor of taking their place. The king willingly consented. St. Raymond went through the provinces preaching a kind of crusade, and twenty thousand soldiers ranged themselves under the Cistercian banner. Their success made him conceive the idea of cementing the union of the knights with his order. The abbot of Escale-Dieu did not at first approve 661of the design. “What an idea,” said he, “for solitaries by profession to convert a monastery into a school of war, and flatter themselves tumultuous exercises can be combined with the silence of prayer and the chanting of Psalms!” A chapter of the Cistercian order was held, but the Kings of France and Castile, and the Duke of Burgundy, overcame the scruples of the abbot, and the pope issued a bull authorizing the affiliation of the Knights of Calatrava with the Cistercian Order as lay brothers. All the houses in Spain were subjected to the rule of the abbot of Escale-Dieu, who had the right of visiting and inspecting them till the secularization of the knights.

The most brilliant era in the history of Escale-Dieu is the thirteenth century. Two saints had sprung from the house (for we must not forget St. Bertrand of Comminges, one of the most popular saints of the Pyrenees, whose tomb is still honored in the town called by his name); it held rule over ten monasteries in Spain; and it was greatly enriched by the neighboring lords, particularly by the counts of Bigorre, who made it their burial-place. The Countess Petronilla, so famous for her five husbands, was a great benefactress of the house. Besides endowing it during her life, she bequeathed it, at her death, all her gold and silver vessels and reliquaries, her jewels, rings, and precious stones, her dresses (probably for vestments), sheets, and blankets. Her first husband was Gaston, Viscount of Bearn, who took sides with Count Raymond of Toulouse, but was reconciled to the church before his death. The second was Nuñez Sancho of Aragon, whom she repudiated under pretext of consanguinity. The third was Guy de Montfort, son of the great opponent of the Albigenses, who was killed at the siege of Castelnaudary. The fourth, Aymar de Rançon, who died about the same time as her second husband. And finally, Boson de Matas, Lord of Cognac. After these five chapters she died at the Abbey of Escale-Dieu in great need, it is thought, of expiatory prayers and good works. Henry III. of England was captivated by the beauty of her daughter Amate, and three other princes sought to obtain her hand in marriage; but she married Gaston VII. of Bearn, and two of her daughters, by the intermediation of Abbot Bernard of the house of Castelbajac, married princes of Aragon.

One of the viscounts of Lavedan also became a benefactor to the abbey, and in his deed of conveyance declares he gives it the soil, the rocks, the vegetation, the fruit, leaves, all that rises from the land towards heaven, and all it contains in its depths.

Rising over the valley of Escale-Dieu are the ruins of the old feudal castle of Mauvezin, like a vulture’s nest on the cliff, overlooking the whole country. It was once considered impregnable, and was, after that of Lourdes, the most important fortress in Bigorre. From this castle went many a valiant knight to the Crusades. One of them, in making his preparations to go beyond the seas with St. Louis, gave to “God and Madame St. Mary of Escale-Dieu” fifty sols of Morlaas money^[109] from the rents of the thermal springs of Capvern.

In early times the abbey found a kind protector in the castle; but 662when, at a later period, it became the stronghold of freebooters, who only issued forth to pillage the lowlands and fat abbeys, the good monks of Escale-Dieu had reason to call it a Mauvais Voisin—a bad neighbor—a name that has ever since clung to it.

When the English took possession of the country after the treaty of Brétigny, the Black Prince established a garrison of soldiers here, who rendered themselves as famous for their brigandage as for their heroic exploits. When the Duke of Anjou and Duguesclin went to the Pyrenees in 1374 to root the English out of the land, the castles of Lourdes and Mauvezin long resisted their stoutest efforts. The latter was besieged by eight thousand men, but the castle was so strong that it would have held out a long time, had not the supply of water been cut off by the capture of the outer cistern. The garrison now suffered all the horrors of thirst under a burning sun. Froissart says the weather was excessively warm, and not a drop of rain had fallen for six weeks. There was no choice but to surrender. Captain Raimounet de l’Epée, the commander of the fortress, like the true Gascon he was, made the best of his fate, and offered to yield up the castle on conditions that were the most advantageous to himself and his soldiers. Unwilling to lose any of his plunder, he stipulated that they should be allowed to depart in freedom, taking with them all they and their sumpter-horses could carry. The duke consented, saying: “Go about your business, every man to his own country, without entering any fort that holds out against us; for, if you do, and I get hold of you, I will deliver you up to Josselin [the executioner], who will shave you without a razor.”

Raimounet had fought well for the English, but he had an eye to the main chance, and he now showed the nature of his bravery by entering the service of the Duke of Anjou and continuing, under the fleurs-de-lis of France, the pillaging he had so long practised under the leopards of England. What he had not seized in the name of St. George he now took in honor of St. Denis, and thus filled both pockets at once. He died fighting by the side of the Duke of Anjou under the walls of Naples.

The sixteenth century, so fatal to innumerable churches and monasteries in France, did not spare the abbey of Escale-Dieu. The Huguenots now invaded the peaceful valley and proved far worse than the old troopers of Raimounet de l’Epée. The first band came in 1518 and burned the stables and the abbot’s residence. In 1567 a more formidable company appeared that put the monks to flight and took possession of the abbey, which they made the centre of their operations, issuing suddenly forth from time to time, like birds of prey, to plunder some church, or monastery, or well-garnished priest’s house. Blasphemies now resounded beneath the arches only accustomed to the voice of prayer and psalmody. All religious emblems were destroyed. The sanctuary angels feared to tread witnessed their orgies. At length, by the combined efforts of some of the lords of Bigorre, they were routed from the abbey, but before leaving they set fire to it and nearly destroyed it. In this destruction was included the fine old Romanesque church of the twelfth century, where St. Raymond and St. Bertrand 663had so often prayed, and the cloister they had so often paced in silent meditation. It is a poor comfort to know that the leaders of this sacrilegious deed were taken and executed at Toulouse. The monks returned to Escale-Dieu, but only to find it in ruins. In the course of time, however, it was rebuilt, but in an inferior style, as suited their diminished means, and the house led a precarious existence till the French Revolution, when it was once more ravaged, the very tombs violated, and the monks for ever dispersed.

The abbey is now owned by a layman who is more interested in agriculture than archæology. It contains, however, but little that is ancient. At the end of a long file of poplars you see the dome and white walls of the church, a building of the seventeenth century, now a grange. There is a flower-garden on the site of the ancient cloister, and in the walls are encrusted a few of the old columns with palm-leaves sculptured on the capitals, emblem of spiritual victory. And the hallowed name of Escale-Dieu, which once gave laws to Spanish knights, is now degraded to a mere post station.

Mauvezin itself became the hold of the Huguenots under Captain de Sus in 1584, and they made the castle more than ever worthy of its name. They extended their ravages as far as St. Bertrand of Comminges, and the name of their leader became a terror in the land. Now the castle is in ruins, which are as melancholy as its history. The square, massive tower that withstood so many attacks is roofless, windowless, and dismantled. Beneath is the vaulted dungeon where the prisoner once groaned in vain—dark and hopeless as the tomb. Over one of the doors of the tower is an escutcheon on which the arms of Foix are quartered with those of Bearn, with the inscription Fébus mé fé—Phœbus made me; for here lived for a time the famous Gaston Phœbus of Bearn. The kite and the osprey inhabit it now. The hoarse notes of birds of prey well suit the place where once resounded the war-cries of Raimounet de l’Epée and Captain de Sus.

Two leagues from Mauvezin is Bagnères de Bigorre, one of the most popular watering-places in the Pyrenees. Here “Esculapius est sans barbe et sans rides” says the poet Lemierre. Long before you arrive you see the tower of the Jacobins rising into the air light and slender as a column. It is a clean, attractive town in a circular valley surrounded by hills cultivated to the very top, or covered with woods whose shady paths are full of mystery. The valley is watered by several streams, and cooled by mountain breezes that are delicious in summer. Numerous canals convey the waters of the Adour through most of the streets of the town, giving a certain freshness to the air, and a supply of water for domestic purposes. An old author attributes the foundation of the place to Venus and Hebe, and says it was here the god Mars came to be healed when wounded at the siege of Troy. It was, at least, frequented by the Romans, who gave it the name of Vicus Aquensis. Their homages to the nymphs who guard the springs are still to be seen graven on marble, such as: Nymphis pro salute sud, Sever. Seranus V. S. L. M.

Like most of the towns of this region, Bagnères was formerly held by the Visigoths, Saracens, Normans, and English one after the 664other, but seems to have been spared by the Huguenots, who perhaps were more afraid of offending the water-nymphs than the saints. The people, it is said, propitiated their leaders by sending them occasionally a tribute of butter and maize. The town, notwithstanding its antiquity, has but few ancient remains. There is a feudal tower or two that formed part of the old fortifications, necessary when, as Froissart says, it was so often worried and beset by the garrison at Mauvezin. The old church of the Templars is standing, but used for profane purposes.

There are many agreeable promenades around Bagnères. One of these is to a green hollow among abrupt cliffs, called the Elysée-Cottin, from Madame Cottin, who was very fond of this quiet nook. It was here she is said to have conceived the noble character of Malek Adhel, which so delighted us in our youth, and wrote not only Mathilde but some of her other works. It is a charming retreat with a fountain in the bottom of the valley, in her time shaded by fine beeches and ash-trees, which have since been cut down.

The Allée Maintenon is so called in honor of Mme. de Maintenon, who accompanied the Duc du Maine here for his health. This Allée begins at the end of the town, and, climbing a steep hill, proceeds along the plateau of Pouey till it comes to a spot where you can see the whole plain of Bigorre, and the waters of the Adour dashing down the steep sides of the mountains. Here, taking the road to Campan, you soon come to the place where once stood the Capuchin convent of Médoux, founded in the sixteenth century by Susanne de Grammont, Marchioness of Monpezat. It was particularly renowned for a miraculous statue of the Virgin, honored under the name of Sancta Maria in Melle dulci, corrupted into Notre Dame de Médoux. The convent was destroyed during the Revolutionary period, but the Madonna, so dear to popular piety, was saved and now adorns the high altar of the church of Asté. The people say it was miraculously transported through the air and thus saved. It is of white marble, and a genuine work of art, by an Italian sculptor. It was the gift of one of the viscounts of Asté, who were generous patrons of the monastery. The expression and pure outline of the face, the dignity of the attitude, and the graceful flow of the drapery excite the admiration of every visitor.

A modern villa now occupies the place of the convent. It is in the midst of a fine park watered by a stream that comes pouring out of a cool grotto. Nothing could be more delightfully rural. Not far off is an old feudal tower, and beyond is Baudeau, the birthplace of Larrey, the favorite surgeon of Napoleon. The Vicomte de Castelbajac has sung the beauties of this spot where once stood

“Une chapelle hospitalière

Toujours ouverte au pélerin,

Jamais il n’y frappait en vain;

Et le malheur et la misère,

La pauvre veuve et l’orphelin,

Y trouvaient toujours la prière

Et l’aumône du Capucin.”

665

“CATHEDRAL WOODS,” MANCHESTER, MASSACHUSETTS.

Hushed grow our voices as our footsteps fall

These darksome woods’ high fretted roof beneath,

Whose living arches, sprung from living sheath,

Are organ-pipes for winds to play withal.

We leave, without, the meadow’s autumn glare—

Its Tyrian wealth of asters prodigal,

Its pomp of scarlet-robed cardinal,

Its gentian that doth heaven’s livery wear.

So leave we, too, the sparkle of the sea,

And land-locked beach where waves break lazily.

Herein we seem among the hills at rest;

Their balm by breath of salt wind undefiled;

Freshness of streams, and strength of great rocks piled,

Seem by our souls in this calm shade possessed,

Where hemlocks stretch their dusky branches o’er

The scattered rocks, whereto the green moss clings,

Catching the prisoned sunbeam as it flings

A miser’s portion of its golden store,

As if it feared to break the shadow deep,

To mar some vigil these grave giants keep.

Here only mountain incense seeming fills

The lofty arches, by sea-wind unbent,

That rise as if with height still nobler blent:

Some peak, cloud-piercing, 'mid the sunlit hills

Whose glamour holds us fast, whose blossoms lie

The darkness of the broken rocks amid,

Whose written speech in these lithe ferns is hid,

Whose forests whisper in the winds’ low sigh.

Should any bird this inland silence break,

Sure in his song the mountains’ soul would wake.

Hearken! breaks through the silence soft a sound

Faint as the thought of half-forgotten dream.

Not speech so sad is that of mountain stream

That from all loftiest heights doth reckless bound,

666Scattering its broken life in shining drift

Of constant dew that mocketh at the sun.

Nor breathes the wind in such low, measured tone

When doth it lightly leafy branches lift—

This wakes and dies in mournful monotone:

The sea’s vast life dashed out against a stone!

Some law this chant seems ever to obey—

Advancing, swells, now sinketh in retreat,

Sad-voiced like life that knoweth but defeat,

Yet still with patient purpose keeps its way.

Joy-burdened silence of the hills, farewell!

And salt sea-wind, thy carven choir reclaim!

Brave sun, set all these dusky trunks aflame!

Lost are our mountains in yon ceaseless swell

That, shoreward rolling, lapsing quietly,

Holds all the strength of the untiring sea.

The land grows little, and we crave the blue

No earthly shade e’er shutteth from the sun,

The barren sands whereon the light waves run

But rest not, bidding evermore adieu,

And evermore returning, bringing gifts

They give and take, and still give o’er again.

We crave the vastness of the salty plain!

As sea-bird on unbreaking billow drifts

Our hearts with that soft plashing throb in time—

Longing, we list our dim cathedral chime.

One well might paint the hemlock solitude,

The quiet shadow that the sunshine breaks;

Even in color give the song that wakes

At windy touch amid the peaceful wood.

Limned all might be, indeed, so cunningly

That one should hear the babble of glad stream,

E’en catch the climbing mountains’ happy gleam;

But—who could paint the murmur of the sea?

Who dream, amid these dark boughs closing o’er,

The song eternal of the broken shore?

667

JULIETTE: A NORMAN STORY.

I.

Marriage is in one respect not unlike greatness: some are born to it, some achieve it, some have it thrust upon them. And the last-named some are apt to find it as unprofitable an acquisition as to Napoleon the Little it proved to be the nephew of his uncle.

Now, M. de Boisrobert was a born bachelor, and, left to himself, a bachelor he would have died. But who shall gainsay fate? Upon him gayly baccalaureating Fate fixed her eagle eye and made up her mind that he should marry. Not without reason has Fate been made a female. When a person of that charming but inflexible sex makes up her mind that any bachelor of her acquaintance shall marry, we know what happens. Married M. de Boisrobert accordingly was, with what direful consequences to the poor gentleman the reader shall see.

Up to his forty-fifth year Messire Guillaume Georges de Boisrobert, Sieur de Boisrobert and Saintange, had lived the happy life of a country gentleman upon his estates in Normandy, near Evreux, satisfied with himself and with the world. Indeed, he had every reason to be satisfied, possessing as he did a fine château, a princely income, an honorable name, an easy conscience, and the respect of all who knew him. From the summit of his towers, look which way he would (and his sight was keen, as so good a sportsman’s should be), he could scarce fix the boundary of his domains. Farms, meadow-land, and woodland, his broad acres stretched for many a mile along the blue waters of the Eure; upon his pastures fed sheep and cattle by the hundred; in his stables neighed scores of gallant steeds. Yet, strange to say, with all his wealth, envy had no word for him, nor was he even decried more than it was fitting a rich and handsome bachelor should be. Certain maiden ladies of uncertain age, to whose charms he had, perhaps, been ungallantly cold, sometimes, indeed, made light among themselves of his pretensions to noble birth. That, truly, was the simple gentleman’s weakness, and he loved to style himself after the stately fashion written above.

“He De Boisrobert, forsooth!” Mlle. Reiné might say over her tatting (or is it tattling the ladies call it?). “He was never aught but plain” (“plain indeed!” Mlle. Gudule would giggle, pointing the mot with her crochet-needle. Ah! thou thoughtest otherwise, fair Gudule, of his beauty when the embroidered slippers, and watch-pockets, and what-nots worked by thy own fair fingers—or thy maid’s—deluged the château and made largesse for its kitchen!)—“plain Guillaume Robert till his father, the notary, got an army contract and left him money enough to buy the wood in which his dismal old château is buried—the stingy old hunks!”

Now, this was not entirely true; and these fair Ariadnes were, to say the least, uncharitable. But it 668must be remembered, for the credit of the sex, that these events took place very long ago—so long ago, indeed, as the time of that great and glorious monarch, Louis XIV.—“le doyen des Rois,” as he called himself—whose majesty was like the sun (which orb, indeed, depicted in the act of illuminating the world, he modestly took for his device), and whose grandeur was indisputably shown in the fact that he could eat more for dinner than any man in his kingdom.^[110] In point of fact, no small number of his loving subjects, owing to their sovereign’s majestic and princely appetite, had rarely anything to eat at all. But to return to our sheep.

M. de Boisrobert was not stingy. On the contrary, his open-handed, and even profuse, hospitality endeared him to all the men about him, who had, no doubt, their own private reasons for liking him, as some of the women had theirs for looking upon him with a different feeling. The manner of his living was almost lordly; and when he was at home, it was nothing but junketing and merriment from month’s end to month’s end. An enthusiastic sportsman himself, his stables and his kennels contained the best that money could buy; while his huntsmen, his gamekeepers, and his beaters were a small army in themselves. Being so rich and so generous, he was naturally looked upon with great respect, and even liking, through all the country round; and many a man who had little reverence for aught besides would doff his hat most humbly to the well-furnished larder of that excellent M. de Boisrobert.

It must be said, however, that in his case—what is unhappily not always true—this respect was rightly his, for better reasons. Amiable, simple, and sincere, a scrupulous observer of his word, his charity was greater than his hospitality, and his piety was as unbounded as his wealth. Every morning he was first at Mass in the little village church of Boisrobert, whose excellent curé was his favorite and, it may be said, his only intimate associate. His best friends, indeed, he counted among that admirable class, whose sterling and unobtrusive virtues he thoroughly appreciated. It was strange that so worthy a penchant was destined to lead him into the great danger of his life. Of the great folks our friend was a little shy; and as for the small farmers and hobereaux, or “squireens” (to borrow from the familiar speech of Ireland a word which alone fitly translates it), who made the bulk of the neighboring landed proprietors, their tastes and habits were little congenial to his own. So good Father Bernard and he were much together; and a pleasant sight it was to see the two friends placidly angling, side by side, for the fish which somehow a French angler seems quite as well satisfied never to catch; or, in the bright summer evenings, playing bowls with all the zest of school-boys on the village green. No more welcome guest than Father Bernard entered the gates of the Château de Boisrobert; and when the November nights grew chilly, and the logs were piled high and glowing in the wide Norman hearth 669(its owner always quoted Horace at such times, and old Mère Chicon, the housekeeper, knew as well as any one that dissolve frigus was the Latin for “stir up the fire and fetch a bottle of Burgundy,” and had had, indeed, many bouts thereanent with the village schoolmaster, in which that worthy was not always triumphant), our hero liked nothing better than to engage his friend in a contest at chess, or trictrac, or piquet, or, over a jug of Norman cider or the aforesaid Burgundy, to discuss the movements of the court, with which he professed to be in constant communication.

That was, as we have said, the honest gentleman’s foible—almost his sole one; he secretly worshipped rank, and often sighed to think that he, who might—and, he sometimes added to himself, should—have been a De Rohan was only a De Boisrobert, barely a gentleman, by virtue of the lands his money had bought. Yet, if not the rose, he had at least lived near the rose. The son of a notary himself, he was yet distantly connected with one of the noblest names in France, as he was by no means slow in making folks aware.

“My good cousin, De Beaumanoir,” he would say in an off-hand way, pronouncing the name tout sec, like the provincial ladies in the Roman Comique, though to his face he never ventured to address him otherwise than as M. le Comte—“my good cousin De Beaumanoir writes me that he is to visit Saint-Aignan at his country-seat, and will have me to be of the party.”

Or, mysteriously: “The army—but this, you conceive, my friend, is between ourselves—a secret, mind you, of state—the army moves on Flanders this week. I have it direct from Beaumanoir.”

It was then, as you may read in Scarron’s sprightly pages, a common ambition of provincial gentlemen to be thought on familiar terms with the great folks of the court. Truly, an extraordinary time!

At these naïve confidences the curé, who knew his friend’s failing, but respected his virtues, smiled, if at all, to himself.

But M. de Boisrobert’s reverence for his noble kinsman went further than talking of him in season and out of season. He gave a more substantial proof of his regard in making him his sole heir. “The money should go with the title,” he said; “the family must be kept up.” It seemed to him a little price to pay for the privilege of being admitted for a month or two in the year to the rather frigid hospitality of the Hôtel Beaumanoir, of being nightly snubbed by the bluest blood in France, and of having down a great man or two for a day in the shooting season, to convert the Château Boisrobert to his enamored fancy into a new Versailles. His noble cousin he would gladly have had stay longer; but the count, after yawning through forty-eight hours of ennui, invariably left. The lands of Boisrobert he wanted; its simple and placid life he could not stomach. His palate was seasoned to higher flavors.

Not to put too fine a point on it, M. the Count de Beaumanoir was as insolent, imperious, and ungrateful a scoundrel as was to be found in a court where gentry of his pattern were rather a drug. Had it not been that he enjoyed the confidence and familiarity of a still greater rogue than himself—no less a one, to wit, than Monsieur, the brother of the Most Christian King—he 670would long since have come to grief. He was more than suspected of a share in the mysterious poisoning of the hapless Henrietta of Orleans, and it was only the credit of his patron and his own well-known courage and skill as a swordsman that kept these doubts from taking form.

Such was the heir whom our worthy M. de Boisrobert had selected for the reversion of his vast estates; and his promise once given, the count determined that it should be kept.

II.

Daybreak of a pleasant morning in October, 1681. In the court-yard and stables of the Château de Boisrobert, and in the great farm-yard near by, all is bustle and confusion. Grooms and footmen, herdsmen and farm-servants, are scurrying to and fro, with lanterns and lighted torches, through the gray dawn, tumbling over one another in their haste, shrieking out contradictory orders at the top of their lungs, clamoring and making all the noise possible, as though they had taken a contract for the purpose and felt they had but a limited time to fulfil it. In the farm-yard the heavy Norman horses are being harnessed, with collars that would be in themselves a load for a horse of our degenerate days, to the unwieldy Norman carts, already loaded with huge sacks of wheat and barley; further on, in the barns, a prodigious lowing and bleating and bellowing tell where Pierrot and Hugues are marshalling their herds; in the court-yard, saddled and bridled, are stamping and snorting the steeds which shall bear M. de Boisrobert and his bodyguard of two armed domestics to the great fair of Moulin-la-Forêt. Himself booted and spurred for the journey, that gentleman stands upon the terrace of the château, overlooking these preparations; chiding here, encouraging there, animating all by word and gesture. M. de Boisrobert has not been a nobleman long enough to forget that he is a farmer, and prefers to be his own steward. He finds it saves time and temper as well as money.

By dint of much exhortation and shrill volubility of expletives in the curious Norman patois all is at last in readiness, and they are off, with many tender partings and tearful embraces between Blaise and Madelon, and much scolding from Mère Chicon the housekeeper, and fervent adjurations to the Bon Dieu to bring them a good market and a safe return. The latter prayer may seem superfluous, as the distance is but thirty miles and they are a stout party. But it is the day of the famous Mandrin, most redoubtable of robbers, and of the terrible chauffeurs who extort the farmer’s hidden hoard by roasting his feet at his own fire; so there is some room for trepidation in the bosoms of the simple peasant-girls whom this animated company soon leave behind.

We have not space to follow the great cavalcade as it goes bellowing and baaing and shrieking and sacrréing over the white roads between the hedges and the apple-orchards to the great fair. We cannot even stop with M. de Boisrobert at the tidy little auberge of the Pomme d’Or for the welcome déjeuner of soupe aux croûtes, to be followed by ham, and perhaps a poulet with the freshest of eggs and salad, and the most delicious of cheeses, and a most refreshing draught of cool 671cider from the great stone jug. Nor can we do more than glance at the humors of the fair—much like other fairs, for the matter of that—with its inevitable jugglers and tumblers and charlatans, swallowing flames as if they were sausages, and pulling endless yards of ribbon from their mouths, to the delight of gaping rustics; its gipsies and gingerbread hawkers; its shrill-voiced peasant women, in high Norman caps, selling eggs and poultry; its shriller-voiced ballad-singers piping out:

“Si le roi m’avait donné

Paris sa grand’ ville,”

or some other favorite chanson of the time. These joys we must pass lightly by, to say that, before the afternoon was well over, M. de Boisrobert had already sold his entire venture at an excellent profit, and it was rumored about the fair that he would go home richer by 20,000 francs (equal to 80,000 now) than when he came. The interest in the lucky capitalist increased; it extended even to his horses, and one or two simple rustics went so far as to push their way, during the temporary absence of the grooms, into the stables, there to gaze in open-mouthed admiration upon the steeds that had the honor of bearing—so history renews itself—M. Cæsar de Boisrobert and his fortune.

The hour for departure drew nigh. As the days were getting short and the homeward ride was long and lonely, and, as already hinted, far from safe—few roads in France were safe in those days after nightfall—M. de Boisrobert commanded an early start. He himself was to ride on ahead, attended only by his two mounted valets, leaving the wagoners and herdsmen to follow more leisurely with the carts. The horses were accordingly brought forth and saddled, and the worthy squire was just setting foot in stirrup when he was accosted by a curé, who, calling him by name, politely craved leave to ride with him, as their road lay in the same direction. M. de Boisrobert assented more than gladly, for not only was company desirable, but a curé the company he most desired, and which could be accepted, as would not have been the case with every comer, without suspicion. So they set forth together.

The curé turned out a most agreeable travelling companion, and M. de Boisrobert secretly felicitated himself on the chance which had thrown them together. So charmed was he with his new-found friend that, when the latter pressed upon him the offer of a supper and a bed at the vicarage, he wavered, until reminded by the sum he had about him of the wisdom of pushing on. But even while he doubted came a most distressing mishap. The horse ridden by one of the servants stumbled, fell, and, before his rider had fairly scrambled to his feet, rolled over stone dead. There was nothing for it but to mount Blaise behind Constant, and so get on as best they might. But, lo and behold! scarcely had Constant drawn rein for the purpose than, with what seemed to the startled hearers almost a shriek, the beast he bestrode set off at a furious gallop, which soon left his luckless rider on the ground with a broken leg. And, strange to say, the poor animal had run but a few yards further when he too stopped, staggered, and—pouf! before one could say Jack Robinson, or its equivalent in Norman French, he is as dead as 672the very deadest of door-nails or herrings.

Whatever M. de Boisrobert may have thought of this odd coincidence, he had little leisure to dwell upon it; for the next instant his own steed was in convulsions, and, barely giving him time to spring from the saddle, like the others rolled over dead. How account for so singular a fatality? Had some poisonous weed got into their fodder? had some venomous reptile stung them in their stalls? or—uneasy doubts crept into the good gentleman’s mind—had they been foully dealt with by reptiles in human form who meant to waylay and rob, if not murder, the travellers? If the latter, it would be indeed most prudent to accept the good curé’s hospitality. His house was luckily not far off, and the disabled servant being first made comfortable in a wayside cabin, and the sound one despatched to the nearest town for a surgeon, M. de Boisrobert and the curé took their way to the home of the latter.

Night had fallen when they reached it, but enough light still remained to show that it was a partly-ruined château, dating probably from the time of the Crusades. One wing had been so far reconstructed as to be habitable, and the ancient chapel, the curé explained, had also been put in order to serve as the village church. “My parish,” he added with a sigh, “is too poor to build a better.” A moat, still filled with green and stagnant water, surrounded the walls; a few planks served for a pathway across it, where once had hung the feudal drawbridge; a dark and snake-like ivy crawled up the crumbling walls; dense woods cast about it a funereal gloom. Altogether its outward aspect was sombre and forbidding in the extreme, and M. de Boisrobert could not repress a shudder or stifle a sinister presentiment as he looked upon his quarters for the night. Had his host been anybody but a curé, he would have felt like drawing back even then.

A little old man, who filled in the modest household by turns the comprehensive functions of butler, valet, groom, gardener, waiter, cook, and general factotum, took their horses in silence, but with a curious glance at the visitor the latter could not help remarking, and the curé led the way to the drawing-room. This was a lofty, vaulted apartment almost bare of furniture, on the walls of which flapped dismally a few tattered pieces of tapestry, the relics of old-time grandeur. A faggot or two crackled and sputtered feebly on the gloomy hearth. Near it, busied apparently over woman’s work of some kind, were seated an old woman of repulsive aspect and a young girl, the latter of whom the curé introduced as Juliette, his niece, and, briefly requesting her to entertain their guest, excused himself to see to the latter’s entertainment for the night.

And now, as the heroine of this exciting history has at last arrived—a little tardiness, as you know, messieurs, must be forgiven to her sex—it seems only becoming that she should have a chapter to herself.

III.

Lovely? Of course she is lovely. What a ridiculous question! Who ever heard of a heroine who wasn’t lovely, still less a heroine who was also the niece of a rob—Peste! The cat was almost out of the bag that time—so nearly out, in fact, 673that we may as well slip the noose and let her go at once. Scat! And now, the author’s mind being freed of an enormous load, he breathes more freely and announces that our luckless M. de Boisrobert has literally fallen into a den of thieves. For what purpose otherwise that artful hint about the rustics prying into the stables, the horses falling dead upon the way, the elaborate setting forth of the gloom and desolation hanging like a pall over the ruined château—to what end, do you suppose, was all this expenditure of literary artifice, except to prepare the reader’s mind for some blood-curdling and harrowing event? But the curé? the curé? Why, simply no curé at all: a wolf in sheep’s clothing, as there were then but too many in France.^[111]

Of this, however, as yet M. de Boisrobert knew nothing. Filled with vague forebodings of evil he could neither define nor reason down, he felt but little in the humor for talk, and still less—being, as you remember, in his tenth lustrum—for flirtation. So, after one or two wise remarks upon the weather, or the state of the crops, or the latest opera, or whatever other topics gentlemen-farmers then chose to break the ice of conversation with a pretty girl, had been answered more virgineo with shy blushes, or faltering monosyllables, or embarrassed and embarrassing silence, M. de Boisrobert betook himself to the window to look out upon the surrounding country. A full moon threw upon every object a lustre like that of day, and—ha! what is this he sees in the court-yard? Can that be his host, the curé, talking so confidentially to those exceedingly sinister-looking chaps (one of whom he now remembers to have had pointed out to him at the fair as a coiner of base money, the other as a more than suspected thief), and handling those three exceedingly long and ugly-looking poniards!—ugh! how their keen edges glitter in the moonlight as the rascals run their dirty thumbs along to try their temper.

M. de Boisrobert turned from the window with a gesture of affright and despair, and beheld Juliette standing before him, no longer a timid child but a lovely and courageous woman, one finger upon her lip, the other pointing to the ill-featured duenna, who had had the good manners to go to sleep. In a few rapid whispers, and still more eloquent gestures, she explained the danger and her unalterable resolve to save him or perish in the attempt. Whether it was her words or her beauty, M. de Boisrobert felt instantly reassured. Indeed, had he known anything of the course of such adventures, he must have felt so from the moment he laid eyes on her. For what other purpose except to save him could he suppose so lovely a creature was to be found in so vile a den? And let it here be said for the benefit of scoffers that the present writer is well aware how often this incident has been used for purposes of fiction—at least ten thousand times in the English language alone. Yes; but does not the very frequency of its use prove it to be founded on fact, that some time or other it was true? Very well; this is the time it was true. Besides, who has said that Juliette is to succeed in her noble but rash endeavor? 674Suppose—now just suppose—she were to fail; in which of your fictions do you find a stroke of originality like that? If the historian were revengeful; if he had a mind to distort facts, as historians in very remote ages are said sometimes to have done—well, well, we shall see.

In her hurried warning Juliette had made shift to tell M. de Boisrobert that it was meant to put a sleeping potion in his wine, and afterwards to enter his chamber and kill him while still under the influence of the drug.

“Do not for your life refuse to drink,” she added, “but be careful to eat the apple I shall offer you after it, and which will contain the antidote to the drug.”

Scarcely had she ended when the pretended curé came in with his precious comrades, whom he introduced as parishioners. (“A fit flock for such a shepherd!” thought poor M. de Boisrobert.) Supper was served at once, and all went as the young girl had foretold. The wine was drunk and the apple duly presented and eaten with a confidence that must seem truly sublime under the circumstances, remembering, too, that one of M. de Boisrobert’s remote ancestors had lost his entire patrimony through accepting a similar gift from a near female relation. Feigning weariness and sleep, the traveller begged to be excused and was shown to his room.

No sooner was he alone than he began to examine his means of defence and offence. The flints, of course, were taken from his pistols and the bolts removed from the door—they would be poor robbers, totally unworthy the attention of an enlightened reader, who would neglect such obvious precautions as these. Somewhat disconsolately M. de Boisrobert looked under the bed and into the wardrobe, but found no comfort there. Then he piled all the furniture against the door, drew his sword, said his prayers, set his teeth, thought of Juliette (O middle-aged and most forlorn of Romeos!), and awaited the conspirators.

He had not long to wait. Scarcely had he taken position when a stealthy tread outside, a fumbling at the latch, and probably a strong odor of garlic penetrating through the keyhole, announced their arrival. The door was first softly, then strongly, pushed, and then, as the unlooked-for resistance showed their plot was discovered, a furious volley of oaths was followed by an onset that made the barricade tremble. Now should we dearly love to entertain the reader with the description of a terrific combat à l’outrance—also à la Dumas—wherein M. de Boisrobert, calmly awaiting his foes’ approach, falls upon them with such ferocity that in a twinkling he has one spitted like a lark, another cloven to the chine, and the third in headlong flight and bawling lustily for mercy, but pricked sorely in tender places by the relentless sword. But, alas!—such is the fatal limitation of your true story—nothing of the sort took place. On the contrary, our hero was in all probability horribly frightened and thoroughly glad to see a secret panel suddenly slide back, and a white hand thrust through the opening, while the sweetest voice he had ever heard begged him to make haste. To seize that hand—and who shall blame him if he pressed it to his lips?—to dart through the opening—quick! quick! good Jean!—to close the panel, is the work of an instant. Scarcely is it shut when cr-rack! crash! 675bang! go door and barricade, and the foiled assassins are heard stamping and swearing furiously about the deserted room. If you could but have seen their faces and heard—no, it would not have been edifying to hear their language. But the fugitives are safe. Need it be said that the foresight of the faithful Jean (who, of course, follows his young mistress, having, indeed, waited this long time in the robber’s den only for a chance to be on hand in this emergency) had provided horses, on which they soon reached Evreux, where they lodged an information, which, there being no police there to speak of, led to the prompt arrest of the ruffians.

Placing the lovely Juliette in a convent, M. de Boisrobert returned home. But it was observed that he hunted less than formerly, that he was often closeted with Father Bernard and his notary, and that he spent much time in settling his affairs. Need the result be told? What in the world is a middle-aged bachelor to do whose life is saved by a lovely maiden of spotless virtue? For, be it known, the fair Juliette, left an orphan only a week before, had, by her dying father, a rich farmer of Brézolles, been consigned to the guardianship of this wicked brother, whose evil courses he was far from suspecting. All that is as plain as a pikestaff; as it is that in less than six months after, just long enough to get the trousseau ready (from the Worth of the day, of course) and to see the wicked uncle comfortably hanged, the bells of Friar Lawrence’s—we should say of Father Bernard’s—little church at Boisrobert rang out a merry answer to the problem last propounded.

When the distant echoes of these wedding chimes reached the ears of M. le Comte de Beaumanoir at Paris, he was not at all angry, as people thought he would be. Oh! dear, no. On the contrary, he only smiled, showing a remarkably fine set of teeth. So that people said he was a brave man, this poor M. le Comte, and not by any means as black as he was painted. And, indeed, a great many folks began to commiserate him and to abuse M. de Boisrobert.

IV.

Well?

Well what?

Why, what came of M. de Beaumanoir showing his teeth?

Oh! that? Nothing—just nothing at all. That’s the trouble, you see, of telling a true story: one’s imagination is hampered at every step. It would have been most delightful and exciting to have invented a frightful tale of the count’s vengeance; how he slew his recalcitrant kinsman, immured his weeping bride in a dungeon for life, and laid waste the lands of Boisrobert with fire and sword, etc., etc. But the truth is, he did nothing of the kind. Indeed, his teeth were speedily drawn, and he was glad to get away with his worthless life. The false curé confessed before his death that the count had suborned him to kill his kinsman as he returned from the fair, promising him a sum equal to that which he would be sure to find on M. de Boisrobert’s person, and even suggesting the disguise. He little thought that the very scheme he fondly imagined was to secure him his coveted inheritance was destined really to lose it to him for ever. So ever come to grief the machinations of the wicked! This last escapade was a little too much even for courtly morals, and Monsieur 676was quietly advised to hint to his murderous favorite that his health would probably be the better for a change of air.

And the fatal consequences resulting from this marriage?

Yes, yes, of course; how stupid to forget it! Well, a cynic might say that for a bachelor to marry at all, especially at forty-five—but never mind the cynic. Their married life was surely not unhappy? Let us hope not. Do Romeo and Juliet ever throw teacups at each other over the breakfast-table because that duck of a spring bonnet is not forthcoming? In romances certainly not; but in true stories—hem! Let us trust, however, that peace reigned eternal over the domestic hearthstone at the Château de Boisrobert. But his marriage had cost its owner an illusion—a life-long illusion; and that is a painful thing at forty-five. Disenchantment seems to come harder as one gets older and has anything left to be disenchanted of. He ceased to believe that rank and birth are the same as goodness, or even greatness, and it cost him many a pang, and no doubt a great deal of real though whimsical unhappiness, to be forced thus suddenly and radically to readjust his scheme of life. But, in spite of the adventure which gave him a wife, perhaps because of it, he never lost his faith in curés or in Juliette; and the games of bowls and of trictrac were all the pleasanter for the sweet face that thenceforth lit them up, and the romping curly-pates that disturbed them and in time effaced from their fond father’s memory his lingering regret for the loss of a noble heir.

TO AUBREY DE VERE. AFTER READING “POEMS OF PLACES—ITALY,” EDITED BY H. W. LONGFELLOW.

I stood in ancient church, ruined and vast,

Whose crumbling altar of its Lord was bare,

Whose shattered windows let in all the glare

Of noonday heat, and noise of crowds that passed

With careless jest, of malice not assoiled.

Within, fast-fading angels still lent grace

Of art, believing, to the holy place

That cruel hands of its best gift despoiled.

With weary feet I trod the broken floor,

With tearless eyes the maimèd aisles gazed down,

When, lo! afar a waxen taper shone,

Burning a hidden altar clear before:

Here hastened I, here knelt—O poet true!

Thine was the light that shone my sorrow through.

677

COLONIZATION AND FUTURE EMIGRATION.

God has apparently chosen the United States as the theatre for the demonstration of the truth that the Catholic Church is the church of the people. She has always been the church of the people; many of her most severe persecutions have been caused by the stand she has taken in behalf of popular rights and individual freedom against the tyranny of kings and the exactions of nobles. But never before has she been furnished with so large a field for the manifestation and development of her popular and democratic character as has been prepared for her here. It is her destiny, we believe, to save the republic from the ruin to which the sects and their offspring, the atheists, would lead her. Even those of our Catholic readers who may not fully share this belief will admit that, to all seeming, the Catholic Church is destined to play an important part in the future history of our country—at least that she has grown in numbers, material wealth, and social influence during the last thirty years to an almost marvellous degree.

A better or more certain method of accomplishing the work of the church in the United States could scarcely have been devised than the congregation of a large share of the Catholic emigration in our great cities. The Catholic Church in the United States is not “a foreign church” in any other sense than the Bible, or Shakspere’s plays, or Homer’s poems are “foreign” books; she is, as they are, and far more than they are, the common inheritance of all, and she is as much at home here, and as rightfully at home, as she is or ever was in any other land. Indeed, the church of God is not and cannot be foreign to any of God’s creatures. But a large proportion of her children in the United States at present are either of foreign birth or are the descendants of foreign-born persons in the first or second generation. These people did not bring the Catholic Church with them to America: they found her here; she had always had an existence here since Christopher Columbus planted the cross upon San Salvador, and since the Jesuit priests sailed up the St. Lawrence and down the Mississippi rivers. If, however, the emigration which has poured into this country since 1840 had not arrived, or had it come from non-Catholic countries, and had the growth of the church here been dependent wholly, or even chiefly, upon the natural increase of American Catholic families and upon converts from Protestantism or heathenism, the church in America to-day would have been numerically insignificant; which is only the same as to say that, if emigration had ceased after the first European exodus, the population of the United States to-day would be equally insignificant.

We may form some idea of what the progress of the church under these conditions would have been here by remembering what it has been in England since the cessation of the active persecutions which followed the Reformation. There are about 1,800,000 Catholics 678in England to-day. Of these not less than 800,000 are Irish, French, German, Spanish, and Italian emigrants or their children; the remaining 1,000,000 represent all the converts of English birth, as well as the descendants of the old Catholic families who always retained the faith. Half a century has elapsed since the English Catholics were emancipated from the last remnant of the persecuting and restrictive legislation which had oppressed them since the days of Elizabeth. During this half-century the church in England has been free—free in its own government, free in its work of propagating the faith and of bringing back the English people to the religion which their fathers had cherished for a thousand years.

Yet, with some advantages that Catholics in the United States did not and do not yet possess, the growth of the church in England during the last fifty years has been vastly less than the progress she has made in this country during the same period. In 1830 there were more Catholics in England than in the United States; since then the church in both countries has been equally free, with the advantages at the start on the side of England. But now the Catholics in the United States outnumber those in England more than fourfold.

In 1830, according to the most trustworthy estimates, there were 600,000 Catholics in England and 475,000 in the United States; now they number two millions there and from six to seven millions here. In England to-day the church has a cardinal, twelve suffragan bishops, and 2,064 priests; in the United States she has a cardinal, 66 archbishops and bishops, and 5,297 priests. In England, according to the English Catholic Directory for last year, there were 997 Catholic churches, 7 theological seminaries, 312 ecclesiastical students, 15 colleges, 38 asylums, and 5 hospitals. In the United States, according to the American Catholic Directory for the same year, there were 5,292 Catholic churches, 34 theological seminaries, 1,217 ecclesiastical students, 62 colleges, 219 asylums, and 95 hospitals.^[112]

We have drawn out this comparison for the purpose of accentuating our former remark that the marvellous growth of the church in the United States during the last half-century has been mainly due to emigration from Catholic countries. Had it not been for these accessions, it is doubtful, in our opinion, whether the church in the United States would to-day equal in numbers the church in England. But would its growth have been so great, so pronounced, so commanding to the attention of all beholders, had this emigration been directed away from the cities and dispersed throughout the rural and agricultural sections of the country? A little reflection will, we think, show that this question must be answered in the negative. It would have availed the church nothing had these emigrants been placed in their new homes under conditions where the preservation of their faith in any practical form would have been almost impossible; where they would have been deprived of the care and counsel of 679their spiritual guides and of the sacraments necessary for salvation; where their children would have remained unbaptized, their marriages have been degraded to civil contracts, and their souls starved and enfeebled by the absence of the Bread of Life. Yet that this would have been the fate of the great majority of them, had they not congregated in the cities, cannot be doubted, unless, indeed, God had chosen to work another miracle in their behalf and to create for them a miraculous supply of priests—a supply so large that every little hamlet in the far-off wilds of the West and North should have been furnished with a spiritual director.

Some boast of having even nine millions of Catholics in the republic; but it can be shown that there are perhaps half as many more Americans now living who are the children of Catholic parents in the first or second generation, but who have lost their faith and grown up as Protestants or without any religion at all, chiefly because their parents had gone into districts where there were no priests, and where the exercise of their religion, save as a spiritual meditation, was impossible.^[113] It was only when the Catholic emigrants began to arrive here in large numbers, and to dwell together by hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands in the great cities, that it became possible, humanly, to provide for their religious wants and for their Catholic education. How nobly they have themselves furnished the material means for this work the statistics given above show. They have mainly done it for themselves. In England the Irish Catholics, in their works of charity and in the erection of their churches, have often been aided by the contributions of their wealthy English fellow-Catholics; but in America the foreign-born and the descendants of the foreign-born Catholics have for the most part built their own churches, their own convents, seminaries, and schools, and have received but little aid from their co-religionists of native ancestry. Indeed, in some instances within our own knowledge it is the latter who have been the beneficiaries of the former; and many an American Catholic to-day is indebted to the charity and self-denial of German, French, and Irish Catholics for the services of the priest who was the means of his conversion, and for the erection of the church in which he hears Mass. We repeat that all this was made possible by the congregation of our Catholic emigrants in the cities, and that 680the most deplorable consequences would have followed had not this congregation taken place.