Volume 26 — VOL. XXVI., No. 154.—JANUARY, 1878. (continued 4)

“Be me faix, thin, Miss Matilda, ye’d betther lave out a dozen anyhow, for he lapped it up yistherda like wather,” replied that functionary with a broad grin.

“And see that Mrs. Colonel Bowdler’s glass is always full.”

“I’m thinkin’ she’ll see to that herself wudout thrubblin’ me,” muttered Fogarty.

“Ask Colonel Bowdler if he’ll take sherry or Madeira with his soup.”

“To be sure he will, miss.”

“I say ask him which he’ll take.”

“I’ll make bould to say he’ll take the both o’ thim,” grinned Fogarty, who, with that quick perception 1032characteristic of his race, had already “measured his man.”

“Be very particular about the ongtray.”

“I will, miss, an’ the tay-thray too.”

“And above all things keep sober, Fogarty.”

“He’s a teetotaler,” chimed in Mrs. Casey. “Aren’t ye a teetotaler, Luke?”

There was a comical expression upon Luke’s face as he stoutly replied: “I am, ma’am; but I’m not a bigoted wan.”

At about four o’clock a note arrived from Mrs. Bowdler.

“Oh! my gracious, I hope there’s no disappointment,” cried Matilda, turning very pale, while dire apprehension was written in the pallid features of her mamma.

“I hope not; that would be awful, me pet.”

The note ran thus:

“292 Stephen’s Green, 3.30 o’clock.

“My Dearest Miss Casey: Our dear friend Major Beamish and his charming daughter, nearly related to the Beamishes of Cork, have just written to say that they will dine with us to-day. I must, therefore, with the MOST painful reluctance, ask of you to allow us to cancel our engagement to you. I cannot tell you how sincerely this grieves me, but the B.’s, though very old friends, are people of that haute distinction that one cannot treat as one possibly could wish.

“With kindest regards to your dear mamma, and with united kind regards from the colonel to all chez vous, I am, my dearest Miss Casey, yours affectionately,

Jemima Bowdler.”

“This is agonizing!” cried Matilda, ready to burst into tears.

“Our lovely dinner!” moaned Mrs. Casey.

“There is some fatality about us.”

“Wan pound five a head without wine, and seventeen and six extra for a pineapple.”

1033“Was ever anything so provoking? It’s enough to drive one mad!”

“I suppose Mick must ask in the apprentice to eat the dinner, as we’ve to pay for it. Such food for to cock up an apprentice with!” sighed Mrs. Casey.

Miss Casey perused the letter again, and finding P. T. O. in the corner, turned the page and read a postscript as follows:

“P. S.—The colonel has just come in, and what do you think he has the audacity to suggest?—that we ask your permission to bring the Beamishes to your dinner to-day. The colonel has taken such a fancy to you, dearest young friend, that he treats you as if he had been on intimate terms for years. He insists upon my writing this, but please to blame him for this piece of audacity.

J. B.”

Miss Casey’s joy knew no bounds. The Beamishes of Cork, one of the oldest families in Ireland—such a charming addition to the party. She would order round the brougham, and drive over to dear Mrs. Colonel Bowdler’s at once to thank her for such a signal mark of kindness; as for the colonel, she could have hugged the gallant veteran from sheer gratitude.

She did not know that the Bowdlers wished to shelve the hungry major and his daughter in a polite way, and provide them with a sumptuous repast at the expense of Mickey Casey. Not she, indeed; so she stepped into her carriage, and having driven, first, round to the caterer’s to order reinforcements, proceeded to Stephen’s Green, where she was received by Mrs. Bowdler in a small, dingy front room minus a fire, although it was late in December and bitterly raw and cold.

Mrs. Bowdler kissed her, and gushed over her, and begged to be excused for hurrying her away for 1034the tyrant post, as she was compelled to finish a letter to her dearest friend, the wife of the governor-general of India. Miss Casey cut short her stay, as in duty bound, and Mrs. Bowdler ascended to the drawing-room, where three or four visitors were assembled around a fairly decent fire—one of the ladies, during the temporary absence of the hostess, having surreptitiously stirred it up—to whom she imparted the intelligence that she had just parted from the governess to Mrs. Geoffrey Ponsonby, whom that aristocratic personage had sent over in the Ponsonby brougham with a request that she and the colonel would dine in Fitzwilliam Place upon that day, whereat the visitors declared that Mrs. Geoffrey Ponsonby was evidently very desirous of Mrs. Bowdler’s company, and that it was a very remarkable instance of her esteem and regard.

At 6.30, military time, the company arrived, and were ushered into Mickey Casey’s study in order to uncloak. Major Beamish wore a short brown wig on the top of a very high, a very bald, and very shiny head. His eyes were small and watery, and his moustache, greased with a cheap ointment, lay like a solid cushion of hair beneath a nose with nostrils as expansive as those of a rocking-horse. He was attired in a faded suit of evening clothes, his shirt-bosom bearing the indelible imprint not only of the hand of Time, but of the hand of a reckless laundress, who hesitated not to use her nails upon the sierras of its coy and threadbare folds.

Miss Beamish was a gushing maiden of twenty anything, possessed of a profusion of frizzly fair hair, done in a simple and childlike fashion, and bound by a fillet 1035of blue ribbon over a vast expanse of forehead. Her eyes were greenish gray, and not quite free from a suspicion of a squint. Her nose resembled that of her sire, and her mouth was almost concealed by her thin and bloodless lips. Her gaunt frame was enveloped in a gauzy substance over a pink silk, which betrayed the recent presence of the smoothing-iron. Bog-oak ornaments rattled around her neck, at her ears, and upon her lean and sinewy arms.

“Colonel an’ Missis Bowhowdler,” roared Fogarty, as the guests entered the drawing-room. “Major an’ Missis Baymish.”

“Miss, fellow, Miss,” impatiently cried the major.

“Miss Baymish, I mane,” adding in an undertone: “It’s not but she’s ould enough and tough enough for to be a missis tin times over.”

“This is so good of you,” said Matilda, shaking hands all round, “and so good of dear Mrs. Bowdler to give us the pleasure of having you.”

“Monstrous fine gal. Right good quarters,” observed the major to the colonel, glancing round the room at the superb mirrors, buhl cabinets, inlaid tables, rich hangings, and furniture upholstered in yellow satin.

“You might do worse than take this girl. Casey’s good for twenty thousand,” suggested the colonel.

“If Tibie was once quartered on the enemy I’d enlist again—I would, sir, by George! I’d take the shilling from that seductive and dangerous recruiting sergeant, Hymen,” exclaimed the major, wagging one soiled white glove and posing himself after a gratified and prolonged glance in the mirror.

“Miss Matilda,” whispered Fogarty, who had just entered, and 1036who was endeavoring to attract her attention. “Miss Matilda! Miss Tilly!”

“What is it, Fogarty?” asked Miss Casey at length; and upon perceiving him, “What is it?” she repeated somewhat testily, as Mrs. Bowdler was engaged in narrating a delightful conversation with the lady-lieutenant.

“The masther’s clanin’ himself, an’ he wants a lind av yer soap, miss, as there’s not a screed in the house, be raisin’ av the misthris washin’ the glass an’ chany wild the rest av it.”

The guests filed down in the order prescribed by Matilda, save that she fell to the arm of Major Beamish, who overwhelmed her with compliments, which only lasted until the soup was served, as from that moment his attention became concentrated upon the delicacies placed before him, on which he opened so murderous and effective a fire as almost to paralyze the energies of the ubiquitous and perspiring Fogarty, and the solicitous attentions of a young lady from the kitchen, whose stertorous breathing made itself heard above the din and clatter of knives, forks, and conversation, in a distinct and somewhat alarming manner.

“Hi! some more soup. Another cut of fish. I’ll try that entrée again. Let me have that last entrée once more. Some turkey and ham. Why don’t you look alive with the champagne? A slice of roast beef—underdone. Some pheasant; ay, I’ll try the woodcock. Jelly, of course.” And the gallant major kept the servants pretty busily engaged during the entire repast.

Matilda was in a shimmer of delight. Her darling hopes were being realized at last, and society 1037was budding for her. A colonel and his wife, a major and his daughter—why, what higher rank need any person desire? How friendly, how gracious, and how charmingly they ate and drank and praised everything! This was life—a life worth living; this was that delicious glow of which she had read in Lothair and other novels portraying fashionable existence.

While these rosy thoughts were coursing through her brain a noise was heard in the direction of the hall, and a man’s voice in tones of angry expostulation.

“Your servants are quarrelling, Mrs. Casey,” observed Mrs. Bowdler, holding up her hand to enjoin silence.

“It’s that Luke Fogarty; he can’t keep his fingers off the dishes, and the girl is—”

At this moment the individual in question burst into the apartment with an expression as if some fearful catastrophe had just happened.

“What is the matter, Fogarty?” demanded Mrs. Casey, glancing at her retainer with an inquiring eye.

“We’re bet, ma’am,” responded Fogarty in a half-whisper.

“What do you mean?”

“We’re bet up intirely. Misther Tim has came.”

Mrs. Casey felt as if she would have fainted, while Matilda bit her lips till the blood came; and as they were still gazing at each other in the direst consternation, Mr. Timothy Rooney entered the apartment, clad in a bulgy Ulster that had known fairs and markets and race-courses for several previous years, a felt hat of an essentially rakish and vulgar description, his pants shoved into his muddy boots after the fashion of a Texas ranger, 1038while his hands were swollen and the color of beet-root.

“Company, be the hokey crikey!” he exclaimed, as he advanced to embrace the reluctant hostess. “Ah! Mary, ye didn’t expect me,” giving her a kiss that made the glass drops upon the chandelier jingle again.

“No, we didn’t expect you, Tim,” gasped his sister.

“No, of course not. Shure I sent ye a telegraph that that villyan of a Phil Dempsey drank me best cow on me—tellin’ ye that—”

“Won’t you take some dinner in your own room?” interposed his niece, now the color of a peony.

“Come over here and kiss your uncle, ye young rogue. Up-stairs, indeed! What would I do that for?”

“You are not exactly dressed for dinner.”

“Oh! I’ve a shirt on under this Ulster, and I’ll show a bit of the bussom, as the man said, never fear. Well, Mickey, me hearty, how goes it? Put it there,” extending his beet-root fist to his brother-in-law.

“My brother, a regular character, immensely wealthy; obliged to put up with his ways,” explained Mrs. Casey, while her daughter retired with Mr. Rooney, with a view to inducing that gentleman to refrain from again putting in an appearance.

“A very fine, joyous son of the Emerald Isle,” cried the colonel, helping himself to champagne.

“When I was quartered at Dum Dum,” observed the major, following the good example of his senior officer, “we had just such a joyous, devil-may-care fellow in the Tenth. He resided in the bungalow with me, the compound being in common. One morning, while enjoying chotohassary—the major 1039aired his Indian experiences and Hindoo acquirements upon all occasions— I happened to call my kitmagar as well as my consumar, who was—”

The narrative was interrupted by the entrance of Mr. Rooney and his despairing niece. Tim had given his face what is commonly known as a “Scotch lick,” causing it to shine again. He was about forty years of age, rough-looking as a Shetland pony, and a “warm man”—i.e., the possessor of a few thousands in the bank and of a well-to-do, well-stocked farm.

“I’m tidy enough now, I think; at all events, yer friends will be aisy on a traveller. Why don’t ye introduce us, Mick? Where are yer manners?”

He was presented in due form by the abashed Casey, and, after having shaken hands with all round, commenced a vigorous attack upon a slice of turbot with his knife, plunging that useful instrument two or three inches into his mouth at every helping, until Miss Beamish, who was seated opposite, shuddered with apprehension.

“Is there anything the matter with ye, ma’am?” he demanded, upon observing a ghastly contraction of the muscles of her face.

“N-nothing,” she stammered.

“Ye haven’t got a pain?”

“Uncle, help yourself to champagne,” shrilly interposed Matilda.

“Pshaw! get me some whiskey, me pet,” adding, as he winked facetiously upon Mrs. Bowdler, “champagne is taydious.”

“By and by, uncle,” said the agonized girl.

“A little drop wouldn’t harm Miss Baymish there, Matty; she looks as if—”

“Take some more beef, Tim,” put in Mrs. Casey.

1040“Well, just wan skelp more, Mary. Room for wan inside, as the man said.”

When the ladies had retired Mr. Rooney stretched his legs beneath the table and his body on the chair until his chin was nearly on a level with the table.

“Now, Mickey, in with the hot water, and let the girl put a kettle under the pump. Are ye fond of sperrits, major?”

“Well, the fact is that spirits don’t agree with me.”

“Oh, then, Mickey Casey has some that will oil the curls of yer wig for ye.”

“When I was quartered at Dum Dum,” observed the major hastily, “there happened to be a very rollicking, gay, charming fellow of our mess, who shared my bungalow with me—the compound being in common. One morning I was engaged at chotohassary and—”

“What the dickens is chotohassary?”

“Breakfast, Mr. Rooney.”

“I never heard it called by that name before. Go on, you old son of a gun.”

“Well, sir,” continued the major somewhat stiffly, “I had occasion to call my kitmagar.”

“Kit who?” asked Tim.

“Kitmagar, one of my servants.”

“An Irishman, of course.”

“No, sir, a Hindoo.”

“Well, this flogs; are ye listening to this, Mickey?” addressing Casey, who had drawn off the colonel.

“Am I listening to what?” asked the host rather gruffly.

“To this old fogy here.”

“Really, Mr. Rooney—” began the offended major.

“Don’t mind him, Major Beamish,” cried Casey, “but pitch into the claret; it’s Château Lafitte of a comet vintage. At least, Redmond 1041told me so, and he ought to know.”

“It’s a very fine wine, Casey—a soft wine, sir, in superb condition, and heated to perfection,” observed the major, tossing off a glassful and quickly replacing the goblet.

“Goes down like mother’s milk,” added the colonel, following suit.

“Well, major, go on about Kit Megar,” urged Rooney.

“Coffee is in the dhrawin’-room, jintlemin,” yelled Fogarty, entering.

“Well, let it stay there, Luke.”

“Shall we join the ladies?” asked Casey, with a society air.

The colonel looked at the major, the major looked at the colonel, and both looked at the claret jugs.

“Oh! hang it all, no,” responded the major; “this wine is too good—much too good.”

“More power to yer elbow, Baymish! An old dog for a hard road,” laughed Tim Rooney. “Eh, Luke, this is a knowing old codger.”

Mr. Fogarty, being thus appealed to, gave a willing assent: “Up to every trick in the box.”

After the gallant warriors had sufficiently punished Casey’s cellar they repaired to the drawing-room. As they ascended the stairs they compared notes.

“Did you ever meet such a queer customer as this brother-in-law?”

“Never. He’s the most vulgar, insolent blackguard I ever encountered.”

“He has lots of money.”

“I wonder does he play loo?”

“We can ask him.”

“He’d play a lively game.”

“And could be plucked like a green gosling.”

To the intense relief of the Casey family, Mr. Rooney stoutly refused to adjourn to the upper regions, but remained in the dining-room 1042smoking a short clay pipe and drinking whiskey-punch.

Miss Beamish, upon hearing that he was enormously wealthy and unmarried to boot, began to build a castle in Spain, in which she figured as châtelaine, while the uncultured proprietor was gradually toned down by those feminine influences which smooth the angles of the most rugged natures.

“I do like this child of nature, Miss Casey,” she gushed; “it is sweet to hear the wild bird in the full, untutored sweetness of its note. Shall we see your uncle again to-night?”

“I hope not,” was Matilda’s reply.

“Oh! why? He reminds me so much of an arrière pensée, a bright oasis in the desert of my life, that I feel as if I could—but why recall recollections that are fraught with bitterness, why strike a chord which produces but—discord?” letting her pointed chin drop upon the bog-oak necklet, which responded by a dull rattle.

Matilda played for the major—who marked her as the successor of the late Mrs. B——, wagging his be-wigged pate to the music and applauding with maudlin vigor.

“Exquisite! Divine! When I was quartered at Dum Dum—” And he jogged over the same road, to arrive as far as the consumar, when Mrs. Bowdler intimated that it was time to leave.

“But ye won’t go without supper? Just a sandwich and a glass of wine,” entreated Mrs. Casey.

Of course they wouldn’t go, and they didn’t go until they had partaken largely of both.

“Never was more charmed in my life,” exclaimed the colonel, as he bade good-night. “Right glad I refused Lord Howth.”

1043“I thought it was the commander-in-chief,” said Mrs. Casey artlessly.

“Ahem! of course, and so it was; but I have so many invites, you see, that I forget.”

Gentlemen who draw upon their imagination for their facts must needs possess accurate memories.

“You’ll all dine with us on Christmas day,” said Mrs. Casey.

“Oh! yes, do, please,” added Matilda.

“Do, colonel; do, major, like good fellows,” urged Casey.

“Well, really, my dear, I don’t know what to say,” exclaimed Mrs. Bowdler, “but I fear we cannot get out of going to Lady Meath’s.”

“Oh! hang Lady Meath; you may go to her, I’ll come here,” laughed the colonel.

“It’s fixed,” said Casey; “and you, major?”

“I couldn’t say no to such a good offer. When I was quartered in Dum Dum—”

“Is this old fogy at it still?” asked Tim Rooney, emerging from the dining-room into the hall where they were now all assembled.

“We are coming to dine here on Christmas day, Mr. Rooney,” said Miss Beamish, casting a languishing look at him.

“Are ye? Thin upon me conscience ye’ll git a tail end of beef that will feed you for a fortnight—wan of me own cows. And all Mary here has to do is see that the wisps of cabbage is plenty.”

With great hand-shaking, and a general buzz of pleased excitement, the guests took their departure.

“What a success!” exclaimed Matilda, throwing herself on a sofa that had been wheeled out of the dining-room into the hall in 1044order to make room, “except for”—nodding towards Tim, who was endeavoring to light a bedroom candlestick with a singularly unsteady hand.

“They all took to him,” whispered Mrs. Casey.

“I never got such a turn as when he came in. O mamma! I thought I should have died.”

“Well, aren’t the Bowdlers nice, agreeable people, Matilda?” demanded Mr. Casey.

“Delightful, exquisite! Such elegant refinement. And the Beamishes are equally well bred.”

“That major is a downy old bird.”

“He is a most perfect gentleman. How he did praise my playing!”

The Caseys did not see much of the Bowdlers during the next few days, the colonel having over-eaten himself, and his wife being laid up with an attack of bronchitis; but Major Beamish and his daughter were most constant in their attentions, calling, staying to dinner, going to the theatre—Casey paying for all, cabs included—coming home to supper, and other attentions equally delicate and one-sided. The major was very prononcé in his manner toward Matilda, who, while she accepted his homage, did not for a moment imagine it meant more than that excessive and chivalrous politeness which distinguishes the vieux militaire of any nationality.

Miss Beamish lay in wait for Tim Rooney, and spun her web as deftly as the uncouth movements of this desirable fly permitted. She adroitly learned his hours for going out, and invariably intercepted him.

“I’m always meeting that wan,” he observed to his sister. “She’s for ever in the street.”

1045“She’s a very elegant lady, Tim.”

“Elegant enough, but, as tough as shoe-leather.”

By degrees, however, the fair Circe interested him, and when the others were engaged in listening with rapt attention to the major’s oft-repeated story commencing, “When I was quartered at Dum Dum,” Tibie Beamish, eyes plunged into those of the Tipperary farmer, would hang upon his accents as he detailed his own “cuteness” in the purchase of a drove of heifers at the great fair of Ballinasloe, or how he palmed off a spavined pony upon a neighboring but less wide-awake grazier.

If a woman wants to win a man, let her listen to him, if he be fond of narrating his personal experiences; and what man does not revel in ego?”

“She is a nice little girl, Mary, and is not above learning a trifle. I’ll be bail she could go into Ballinasloe fair next October and finger a baste as well as that villyan Phil Dempsey, from the knowledge I give her.”

The spell was working.

Christmas day came, bright, crisp, and joyous. Snow had fallen for the previous few days, and was now hard and shining in the streets, rendering walking somewhat hazardous and sliding almost unavoidable.

Colonel and Mrs. Bowdler arrived very early at Merrion Street—in fact, just in time for luncheon—and by a strange coincidence Major Beamish and his daughter dropped in almost at the same moment. A walk was proposed, but abandoned, and the party, broken up into two camps, sat chatting around the fires in the back and front drawing-rooms.

Everybody is hungry on Christmas 1046day. Everybody thinks of the boiled turkey, Limerick ham, roast beef, plum-pudding, and mince-pies. Why, then, should the guests of Mickey Casey prove an exception to the rule?

Fogarty announced the dinner in a voice that savored of a joyous anticipation. He had had a private and confidential snack with the cook, but merely enough to make him wish for more.

“That’s me tail end of beef,” exclaimed Tim Rooney, as the huge mound of golden fatted meat was uncovered, behind which the host sat in a state of total eclipse—“that’s me tail end, and a lovelier baste never nipped grass, nor the—”

“Will you carve this turkey, Tim?” interrupted his sister.

“To be sure I will, Mary; but ye must let me do it me own way,” divesting himself of his coat and proceeding to work with a will.

“O Tim!”

“O uncle!”

“Let him alone,” exclaimed Mrs. Bowdler, whose teeth were watering for a slice of the breast. “Such a gigantic bird requires to be carved sans cérémonie.”

“When I was quartered at Dum Dum—” began the major.

“See here, now, me ould codger, we’ve had enough of that singsong.”

The major smiled grimly and tossed off a glass of Amontillado.

“You are a character, Rooney,” he said.

Tim acquitted himself admirably, cutting the bird and innumerable jokes at the same time, many of them of a personal nature, such as allusions to the gallant major’s wig, which he called a “jasey,” the scragginess of Mrs. Bowdler, and the rosy tip at the extremity of the 1047colonel’s nasal appendage. However, as everybody was in good-humor, his facetiæ passed off without exciting ill-feeling, and all went as merry as a marriage-bell.

The dinner had disappeared, and the company sat tranquilly over the dessert. Tim, having resigned his post of honor, returned to his chair beside Miss Beamish, to whom he whispered a good deal, to the intense amusement of his brother-in-law, who declared that Tim Rooney had been hit at last.

“There’s many a true word said in jest, Mick,” retorted Tim. Miss Beamish hung down her head and tried to blush, and, failing in this, essayed a cough, which proved more successful.

“Oh! Tim is an old bachelor,” cried Mrs. Casey, “and a most determined one.”

“It’s never too late to mend, Mary.”

“You’ll never mend, Tim.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” ogling his fair neighbor, who again tried a cough, which, however, terminated in a hoarse gurgle.

Tim Rooney was possessor of twenty thousand pounds, all in the Bank of Ireland. His farm was valued at ten thousand, and his stock at five thousand more. He was Matilda’s godfather, and, as a matter of course, all these good things would revert to her in time. It was a standing joke at Merrion Street that Tim should get married without delay.

“Not a bit of it,” he would retort. “I’ll keep looking at them during the winter, and I’ll take another summer out of myself.”

His joking now on the subject of Miss Beamish was exquisite fun to the family of Casey, who enjoyed it only as family jokes can be enjoyed.

1048“You’ll ask me to the wedding, uncle?” said Matilda.

“Sure you’ll be a bridesmaid, Matty.”

“And you’ll have to give me a new dress, a real Parisian one; won’t he, Miss Beamish?”

Miss Beamish bashfully tittered.

“When is it to be, Tim?” asked Mr. Casey.

“Next Thursday, then,” he grinned.

“That’s mighty quick.”

“Delays is dangerous.”

“Right, Tim,” cried Casey. “If I hadn’t asked your sister on the Friday, Joe Mulligan, the tailor would have—”

“Papa, do see that Colonel Bowdler takes his wine,” almost shrieked Matilda.

O agony! he was about informing their patrician guests that his rival had been a—tailor!

“Well, see here, Mickey, and see here, Mary, and see here, Matty,” said Mr. Rooney, rising, “I’ll give ye all a toast.”

“Oh! toasts are vulgar; are they not, Colonel Bowdler?” interposed Matilda.

“Well, ahem! except upon special occasions they are not in vogue,” replied that gallant warrior.

“Well this is a special occasion, and a very special occasion”—Hear! hear! from the host—“and wan that calls for particular mention; an’ it’s health, long life, and happiness to Mrs. Tim Rooney that is for to be. Ye must all drink it on yer legs.”

Anything to humor Tim, now that the Bowdlers and Beamishes tolerated him. So with much laughing on the part of the gentlemen, and much giggling on the part of the ladies, the toast was drunk with all honor.

“And now, Mick, Mary and 1049Matty,” cried Tim, “I may as well let the cat out of the bag. Me and Miss Tibie is to be married on Thursday.”

Had a bombshell fallen in their midst greater consternation could not have shown itself upon the countenances of the Casey family.

“Yer not in airnest, Tim,” said Casey, endeavoring to smile a sickly smile.

“Tim must have his joke,” observed Mrs. Casey, her face as white as a sheet.

“Uncle is so full of fun,” tittered Matilda, dire apprehension in every lineament.

“It’s no jest; is it, Tibie?” asked Tim of his fiancée.

“No, Timothy, I am proud to say it is not,” responded Miss Beamish, placing her hand in the arm of her lover.

“And to think I gave that Bowdler a hundred pounds for to lose us forty thousand,” groaned Casey, as, seated with his weeping wife and daughter, he grimly surveyed the wedding-cards of Mr. and Mrs. T. Rooney. “This comes of yer infernal tomfoolery wantin’ to get into society that wouldn’t touch ye with a forty-foot pole. Serve ye right.”

“Serve us right indeed!” echoed the two ladies.

1050

CATHOLIC “CIRCLES” FOR WORKING-MEN IN FRANCE.

Immediately after the German invasion and the Paris Commune there existed already at Paris a Catholic “Circle” of working-men, distinct, if not in appearance, yet in reality, from the associations of young apprentices called by this name, or under the more appropriate one of Patronages. It was, in fact, a working-men’s association—a little Christian republic; self-governing, by means of a council chosen from among its own number, the members of which council were considered as irremovable. On its festivals the whole association assembled in the chapel belonging to the circle; there its elected functionaries were received into office at the foot of the altar, there they made frequent communions, and thence, in accordance with the customs of the ancient confraternities of craftsmen, they bore in procession the banners of their patron saints. There were formed earnest men, accustomed to hear the language of duty, and ready to make the sacrifices it demands, as those of their number who died in the war had testified, as well as the many more who did not cease to incur, with patience and steadfastness, the persecutions of their scoffing companions in the ateliers.

This association was the work of a religious of the Institute of St. Vincent de Paul—M. Maignen, Director of the Circle of Montparnasse. The subscriptions of the circle, however, which had previously sufficed for its support, were unequal to the burden incurred by its installation, and the external subscriptions which had hitherto aided it had become few in number and small in amount.

M. Maignen then resolved to assemble in council, on the evening 1051of Christmas day, a group of capitalists, among whom were three deputies, three well-known writers, and three military officers, scarcely known to each other except by name; but they were all good and earnest Catholics, and had, moreover, suffered and fought for their country. After uniting in prayer they resolved to seek, in the definitions of the church in regard to her relations to civil society, the germ of the sole social force capable of saving France from the consequences of her errors; and this force, they decided, should be constituted in the form of Catholic Circles for Working-men, similar to the one in which they were met together.

They began, in the first place, by addressing to the Holy Father the expression of their resolution, to which he granted his benediction. In the next they sent, by thousands of copies, an energetic appeal to all “men of good-will.” “The revolution,” they said, “has descended from the brains of (so-called) philosophers into the minds of the people. Are we to leave our misguided working-men to perdition—a perdition in which they will also involve their country—or, by drawing a supernatural strength from the heart of Jesus—himself a working-man—shall we not oppose the associations of men who love darkness rather than light by the Catholic Association, and meet the lessons of materialism by those of the Gospel, and a cold cosmopolitanism by the love of our country?”

Then the little group of men who signed the engagement further united themselves by a religious bond—the daily recital of a prayer, and an annual communion for the intentions of the work, the duties of which the members distributed 1052among themselves according to their respective facilities.

Each section set to work under the direction of a chief: the first for the general promulgation of the work, the second for its foundations, the third for the creation of resources, and the fourth for the popular diffusion of its teaching. The sections worked independently of each other, but met in committee when there was any need for arranging or deciding as to any general plan of action. For the purpose of directing and controlling the action of the fourth section the committee also appointed a council under the name of Jésus-Ouvrier. Thus the work was constituted in its first committee—that is to say, the first association of the directing class—on the principle of its first “circle,” the Catholic declaration and the division of responsibilities, and, lastly, as a sign and pledge of the union of the active members of the work, the religious bond.

The association thus organized bore marvellous fruit, and in a few months the committee found itself able to relieve the Cercle Montparnasse by creating two similar ones in the quarters (of evil notoriety) of Belleville and Montmartre, which were chosen with the intention of a public expiation, and to furnish each of the circles with a council of its quarter.

This was the golden age of the work, which was, as it were, crowned by the high testimony it received at the Congress of Directors of the Catholic Working-men’s Associations assembled at Poitiers under the auspices of Mgr. Pie. It obtained also an exceptional éclat from the remarkable eloquence of one of its initiators at the Cercle Montparnasse—the intrepid Count 1053Albert de Mun—as well as from the fact of there being several other military officers among them. The work appeared to be marked with a providential character, having at its outset the stamp of trial, followed by that of rapid expansion, and possessing another in the saintly character of its first founder; for, although God may be pleased to employ unworthy instruments to promote his merciful designs, it will always be found that, in the first instance, they have been deposited, as in a chalice, in a holy and devoted soul.

The impetus was given. The large towns of France answered the appeal by requesting the initiators to form, within them, committees like the Directing Committee at Paris. The principles of the constitution never varied; i.e., Catholic affirmation by the acceptance of the religious bond, and the general bases of the work, division of labor among the members of the local association, and periodic communication with the secretariate general.

This in a short time was carried out at Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Lille, and many other places of importance, numerous smaller towns, and even villages, asking for the same institution. And everywhere it bore fruit, the formation of a committee being in every instance followed by the opening of a circle.

At the same time the Council of Jésus-Ouvrier, and, following its example, the committees of the large towns, opened public conferences in popular quarters, where the people were addressed in frank and energetic language, inspired by the intimate union of religious and social faith, and the doctrines of liberalism boldly denounced, 1054which substitute for the precepts “Love one another” and “Bear ye one another’s burdens” that of “To each according to his work”—a maxim good enough in itself, but which the employer translates into “Each one for himself,” and the employed into “My turn next for enjoyment.” These declarations, repeated simultaneously in all parts of France, gave the work a remarkable unity of spirit, which was amply manifested at the first general assembly of its members, held in the spring of 1873.

Difficulties, however, arose in proportion to the progress made. Few adherents were obtained from among the manufacturing chiefs, on whom depends the whole economy of the working-classes; while the committees, formed of men little accustomed to study the laws of labor, did not well observe its divisions, and thus dwindled away. That of Paris, to which had been allotted the most complete autonomy, and which was more especially devoted to the general propagation of the work, gave way beneath its accumulated burden.

“We then” (to quote the words of one of the members in his address to the Congress at Rheims)—“We then turned our eyes with confidence to her who is the help of Christians, our ever Blessed Lady, resolving to go all together and invoke her aid in one of the sanctuaries of France where she has most anciently manifested her power, and where formerly the kingdom was dedicated to her by a solemn vow—Notre Dame de Liesse. The funds of the Paris committee were already exhausted and the year only half over. We collected ten thousand francs, and unhesitatingly devoted them to defray the expenses of this distant pilgrimage.

1055“The committees of the north were invited to join it at the head of the circles they had formed, and on the 17th of August, 1873, twenty-five hundred pilgrims arrived from their respective towns to form one procession to Notre Dame de Liesse. Half of the number, in spite of the fatigues of the way, there received Holy Communion, and we returned with renewed strength and confidence to our posts.”

We will not here give a detailed account of the toils and progress of the year which succeeded the pilgrimage. A brief of the Holy Father confirmed the constitution of the work by the grant of duly specified indulgences attached to it; it also received the canonical protection of a cardinal of the church.

These favors brought a timely encouragement to the promoters of the work; for with its progress its trials also increased. Among the most painful were those of seeing it misunderstood by many persons who might have been expected to prove its warmest advocates. Some of these lost sight of its social character, and preferred to seek the good of a few individual souls instead of helping forward a Christian restoration of society; while others, again, mistook the part to be taken in the committees by the upper classes. “Of what use,” they asked, “is a committee, unless to provide resources for an ecclesiastical director?”

This is a question which has been frequently asked. But it must be borne in mind that if the circle establishes among its members social fraternity, the director could not himself alone represent its paternity. To do this would be to deter other Christians of the 1056upper classes from the unmistakable command they have received to exercise this social paternity which they have from God in the very advantages of their social condition.

For why are riches and honors bestowed upon the few—why the benefits of education, of leisure, of cultivation of the mind—unless it be that they are to be consecrated to the moral guidance and material assistance of the classes who are deprived of such advantages? In regard to this social paternity, as in regard to that which creates the family, the priest must be the consecrator: but, in his turn, the father who would abandon to the priest the charges and responsibilities of the dignity which, by divine right, is his own, would only disappear from among his fellow-men to be confounded before the Eternal Father—he and the two complaisant accomplices of his culpable abdication.

After establishing social fraternity by the circles, and social paternity by the committees, it remained to restore the social family—that is, to associate Christian families in the benefits of the work, after having associated in it the heads of families of various conditions.

The family is, in fact, the first association by natural right, and therefore every constitution which embraces it and does not take it for its foundation is vitiated and sterile. The founders of the work knew this, and were, moreover, not allowed to forget it by the daily reproaches they received—“You are destroying the family; you are destroying the parish!”—and what not. But how to reach the family so as to be of service to it instead of injurious was not for some time made clear. The Circle of Montparnasse, 1057the prototype of the rest, had avoided rather than faced the difficulty by disposing of its active functions in favor only of its unmarried members. But this was plainly not the solution.

The solution had, however, been discovered, at no great distance from Rheims, in the great manufacturing region which has for the motive power of its machines the waters of the Suippe, for its boundary the extensive woods which form an oasis of verdure in the burning plains of Champagne, and for its population factory-men, who wander, at the bidding of the industrial fluctuations of the time, to and from the looms of the north, of Rheims, or of St. Quentin—a population exceptionally indigent, since the struggle between capital and wages, inaugurated by liberalism, has become the normal condition of the producer and the consumer.

In the hamlet of Val-des-Bois, in the centre of this district, an industrial family settled about half a century ago, and brought with it the example of every Christian virtue. Kind towards their workmen, generous even beyond their gains, Messieurs Harmel assembled around their vast establishment all the religious and philanthropic institutions by means of which it has hitherto been attempted to re-establish harmony in the world of labor.

As is but too frequently the case, they failed in this attempt completely. But they were not daunted, nor did they rest satisfied with their past endeavors; for, if they loved the working-men, they loved their Lord still more, and desired as earnestly as ever that he should reign in the hearts of those in their employ.

Not many years ago it occurred 1058to one of them to introduce among the population of their factories—which did not count a single practising Christian—the principle of the Catholic Association. He determined to ask four men to join together to form the nucleus of a circle, and three young girls to be received as Enfants de Marie and wear the badge. In proportion as the associations developed themselves he multiplied them according to the sex, age, and condition of each individual; and this with such success that at the present time the twelve hundred souls who people Val-des-Bois are united in a marvellous aggregation of pious confraternities, among whose members are made, in the course of a year, more than ten thousand communions, in the intention of making reparation to our Lord for the outrages he receives in the modern factory.

Then, also, as earthly goods are often increased abundantly to those who seek first the kingdom of God, the principle of Catholic Association applied to the families of the Factory of the Sacred Heart (l’Usine du Sacrè-Cœur)—for it bears this name—has realized there innumerable economical benefits, a fact which will not surprise those who know the power of this principle. Assistance of every kind, clothing, food, and fuel at very reasonable prices, schools free of expense to the parents, and occasional holidays for recreation, have brought with them, together with economy, the comfort also and prosperity of the families. All these institutions, economic, charitable, and religious, are governed by those personally interested. The circle, which brings together the fathers of families, is, as it were, the centre of this machinery; and 1059the master, who is its motive power, associates with himself not only all the members of his own family and the chaplain of the factory, but also his principal employés, to fulfil the paternal function of a protecting and directing committee, and so to secure to the association the chances of continuance as well as the fruits of example. To this end delegates are annually appointed, who, under the presidency of the master, are the guardians of the corporation.

We will give the result of all these well-considered combinations in M. Harmel’s own words:^[113]

“By the persevering endeavors of many years we have attained the end at which we aimed. Families are reconstituted, peace and love have taken the place of quarrels and disorder around the domestic hearth; the mother rejoices at the change wrought in her husband and children; the father finds in a new life the courage and happiness of labor; his home is delightful to him from the respect of his children, the ready cheerfulness of his wife, and the love of all. Economy has put an end to debts and created savings; the anniversary festivals of the family bring back that affectionate gayety and warmth which give repose amid the fatigues of life, and inspire fresh ardor to go bravely on the way. When we are in the midst of these good and honest faces transformed by Christian influences, we read there confidence and love, and thank the good God who has made the large family of Val-des-Bois.” Such are the experiences there obtained, as if to complete those of the Cercle Montparnasse.

1060Alone among the many excellent men who, after the war and Commune, arose to attempt some means of healing the internal wounds of France, the members of the Œuvre Ouvrière took a solemn engagement, the terms of which were marked out with precision. Each member affixes his signature to an individual and public act of devoted adhesion to the doctrines defined by the Syllabus of the Errors of Modern Society. Preserved, therefore, from the liberalism which in reality puts oppression into the hands of the strongest, and the socialism which demands it for the masses, they will pursue more efficaciously than either of these the vindication of the popular interests, such as the due observance of the Sunday and the protection of the family and home, and, guided by grace and supported by prayer, will find Christian solutions for all the social questions of labor.

The work of the Catholic circles has set on foot a periodical for the study and discussion of these questions—namely, the review which borrows its title from one of the principles of the work: L’Association Catholique. It is open to all questions, but not to all doctrines, for a work which, at the head of its statutes, invokes the definitions of the Catholic Church cannot admit the errors which she has condemned. It numbers among its contributors some of the best social economists and solid Christian writers of the time, and thus provides weapons of proof to the polemics of the Catholic press, besides furthering the great social effort made by the association, which now reckons three hundred circles in all parts of France.

In conclusion, we would mention that it must be borne in mind 1061that the important part in this good work is not the exclusive institution of circles, this being only the first and one of the different forms under which the principle is brought to act. That principle is the direction and protection of the working-classes by the higher and more educated, and the association of the interests of both, as opposed to the lamentable antagonism of the same different classes which is, in our times, the great difficulty of social government and the source of increasing disorder and conflict. These associations are intended to react, by every possible means, against the erroneous social theories so numerous and so impotent for good, and to bring into practice the only true and effectual social law—namely, conformity to the social duties of Catholics. Our religion has remedies for all evils; its practice is supreme political and 1062social wisdom, and in the alarming state of society among the working-classes there cannot be, nor ever will be, found any other course to be adopted than to return to the rules of Christian life. It is evident, then, how wide a field is opened by such a desire breaking forth in the hearts and minds of fervent Christians such as M. de Mun and his friends, and it would be impossible to show in few words all that it has produced and is producing by the grace of God; and although this work of charity has originated in France, and at present exists only in France, it may, it is to be hoped, give rise to similar laudable efforts in all countries, where also, among their associations of Catholic circles for the working-classes, shall, as in this country, be raised the labarum of Constantine and its sacred motto: “In hoc signo vinces.”

1063

THE RIVER’S VOICE.

I.

Through the long hours the day’s strong life had flowed

In sunshine, working good deeds silently,

In clouds whose shadows set new harmony

Among the hills—God’s justice’ old abode.

Through mountain hollows had the wind swept down,

Turning green leaves to silver in the sun,

Winning the meadows in broad waves to run

Where still unlevelled shone their grassy crown.

The troubled river had no vision borne

Of gleaming hill and tree-o’ershadowed shore;

The birches, bending their lost mirror o’er,

Met but the driven waves’ unwilling scorn;

Yet heaven’s blue the broken waters bore,

The breeze but strengthened as it hurried o’er.

1064II.

Lightening their labor with a careless song,

Birds o’er the meadow swept with busy wing,

Flashed in and out the forests’ sheltering,

While clamorous council held the crickets’ throng.

Swift fell the grass beneath the mower’s stroke

To win its perfect ripeness ‘ere day’s end,

When should, the harvest bearing, meekly bend

The mild-eyed oxen ‘neath the unwieldy yoke.

Broken with sound was even the noonday rest—

Shrill-piping locust called imperiously,

Impetuous bee proclaimed its industry,

And blue-mailed flies pursued an endless quest;

Only from throbbing river rose no song

Blending its music with life’s murmuring throng.

III.

Day closed, and busy life lay down to rest.

A shade that moved not held in cold embrace

The yielding meadows and the hills’ calm face,

About whose silence burned the cloudless west.

No leafy murmur rose from darkening wood,

Hushed the pure gladness of the robins’ trill;

Called from low covert some lone whip-poor-will

Only to heighten eve’s still solitude.

The wind asleep, the quiet waters bore

Vision of sky and mountains’ deepening shade,

And touch of bending birches, softly laid,

As the still stream gave back their glance once more.

Clear, through the silence, drifted rippling tones—

The patient river singing to the stones.

IV.

So, through the day, had flowed the river’s song,

So borne the stream its burden of strong life

Spite of its troubled waters’ windy strife—

Heaven in its breast—and, as it sped along,

Bearing its loyal service to the sea,

Praising the stones that gave it voice to sing,

With constant sweetness, whose soft murmuring,

Unwearying ever in its melody,

Was hidden in life’s song that filled the day

With chords confused of labor manifold.

Only with evening’s peaceful skies of gold

Came the lost music of the river’s lay—

Like some brave life whose sweetness but is known

When holy silence doth world-sounds dethrone.

1065

PAPAL ELECTIONS.

I.

The succession of the Roman pontiffs rests on the word of God; other lines of princes may fail, their line shall last until the end of the world. Still, although there will ever be a series of legitimate successors in the Papacy, the manner of succession has varied, being left to human prudence, which accommodates itself to times and places, yet ever under an overruling Providence that directs to its own ends no less the vices than the virtues of men.

The election of a pope is the most important event that takes place in the world. It affects immediately several hundred millions of Catholics in their dearest hopes of religion, and it touches indirectly the interests of all other people on the earth besides. In the pope the world receives a vicar of Christ, a successor of St. Peter, and an infallible judge in matters of faith and morals. The Papacy was always conferred regularly by way of election—from the chief of the apostles, chosen by our Lord himself, to Pius IX., now reigning, who was selected by the cardinals of the Holy Roman Church on the 17th of June, 1846. Between these there have been two hundred and sixty popes, if we follow the number given by the Gerarchia Cattolica, which is published annually at Rome.

On the 25th of July, 1876, our Holy Father, in a discourse to the students of the several colleges in Rome subject to the Propaganda, took occasion to speak quite earnestly of attempts that were being made in Italy to unsettle the minds of Catholics on papal elections by 1066teaching that they were originally popular ones, and that the natural right of the laity in them (which, it was asserted, had been exercised without question for twelve hundred years) was arbitrarily and unlawfully taken away by Pope Alexander III. The errors of this new schismatical party may be reduced to two points—viz., that the share which the people were once usually allowed to take in the election of sacred ministers was a right and not a privilege accorded by the visible head of the church to ages of faith and fervor; and that Alexander III. deprived the Romans of this right in the election of their chief pastor.

Let us state, in the first place, that it is heretical to maintain that the laity have a strict—i.e., inherent or divine—right to elect their pastors, and historically false to assert that such a right was ever allowed by the rulers of the church or was ever exercised by the Christian people. The authorities to confirm our statement are so numerous as to cause almost an embarras de richesses. Besides the great collections which are the common sources of ecclesiastical erudition—the Fathers, the councils, annals, papal bulls; the Bollandists, and particularly, as regards papal elections, the Propylæum ad septem tomos Maji; the works of Thomassin, Gretser, Bellarmine, and others—we may cite here Selvaggio’s Antiquitatum Christianarum Institutiones, lib. i. par. i. cap. xxi.; Mamacchi’s Origines et Antiquitates Christianæ, tom. iv. lib. iv.; and Colenzio’s Dissertationi intorno varie Controversie 1067di Storia ed Archeologia Ecclesiastica, diss. vi. Del preteso dritto del popolo cristiano nell’ clezione dei Sacri Ministri.

The earliest manner of electing the popes was by the votes of the Roman clergy cast in the presence of the faithful, who assisted as witnesses to the godliness of the subject proposed, and to testify that besides his personal merits he was an acceptable person on account, perhaps, of his birth, his nationality, his appearance, or of some other adventitious circumstance which enhanced his popularity with the great body of the people, and would cause him, also, to be looked upon with less disfavor by them who are without.^[114] Although these elections belonged to the clergy and laity of the Roman Church—or we should say, rather, to the higher clergy and the representatives of the laity—the relative rights or parts of each class of electors were not apparently determined by express enactment, but upon grounds of common sense and equity; such, for instance, as that Episcopus deligatur, plebe præsente, quæ singulorum vitam plenissime norit, et uniuscujusque actum de ejus conversatione prospexit,^[115] or that Nullus invitis detur episcopus.^[116] Bellarmine,^[117] Sixtus Senensis,^[118] Petrus de Marca,^[119] and Thomassin^[120] prove that the people’s part in such elections was more perfunctory than real, since testimony of a man’s good repute could be otherwise obtained, and that even an expression of preference was not always heeded; as we learn from the 1068same Pope Celestine, who wrote to the bishops of Apulia and Calabria: Docendus est populus, non sequendus; nosque si nesciunt, eosquid liceat quidve non liceat, commonere non his consensum præbere debemus.^[121] The Roman people, then, did not and could not have, except by usurpation and abuse, a decisive voice in the election of the pope; for such an act is by God’s ordinance placed beyond the jurisdiction of the laity.

After the martyrdom of St. Fabian, in January, A.D. 250, the Holy See remained vacant for a year and a half, until in the month of June, 251, Cornelius was raised to that post of perilous dignity under a tyrant like Decius, who had declared that he would sooner see a new pretender to the empire than another bishop of Rome. This election, although made almost unanimously by all orders, gave rise to the first schism, because Novatian, who headed the rigorous party in the affair of the Lapsi, was consecrated bishop and set himself up as anti-pope. We have an invaluable testimony to the election of St. Cornelius from the pen of St. Cyprian: Factus est autem Cornelius episcopus de Dei et Christi ejus judicio, de clericorum pæne omnium testimonio, de plebis, quæ tunc adfuit, suffragio et de sacerdotum antiquorum et bonorum virorum collegio, cum nemo ante se factus esset, cum Fabiani locus id est cum locus Petri et gradus cathedræ sacerdotalis vacaret.^[122] From this passage of the great Bishop of Carthage we can obtain, says Baronius,^[123] a tolerably good idea of a papal election in the early ages. Prayers were first offered up to God to obtain his assistance 1069in making a choice; the desire of the faithful, or rather of their representatives, and such testimony to the worth of the subjects proposed as they were prepared to give was heard; the wish of the Roman clergy, and their willing assent to the proceedings, were inquired into and sought; and after maturely weighing the for and against, the bishops of the vicinity, with any others in communion with the Holy See who happened to be in Rome at the time, went into executive session and gave the decisive votes—in commitiis suffragia ferebant. With regard to those among the laity who took part in these elections, we must observe that in the beginning, as long as the majority of Christians was composed of persons who had embraced the faith from pure and unworldly motives, whose aim was to behold the church prosperous and glorious, and whose charity, being yet warm, sought not their own end but that which is another’s,^[124] the whole body of Christians who had reached mature years and belonged to that sex which alone had a voice in the church^[125] gave their testimony and assent in favor of that one whom it was proposed to elect;^[126] but the evils of anything like a popular election in a great city were so manifest^[127] that attempts were soon made to leave the choice of such on the part both of clergy and laity—but earlier in the case of the latter order—to a select body or committee, a general suffrage being gradually superseded by the votes of approval given by the rich only and the high in station.

1070We find, perhaps, a germ of this even in the earliest times.^[128] The Council of Laodicea (A.D. 365) clearly desired that the choice should be made by some definitely-organized body, and not by a mere mass-meeting; St. Leo and the Roman council of A.D. 442, and again the former in Epist. lxxxix.cvi., expressly mention the “Honorati,” the magnates at such elections.^[129] The influence of the principal personages in a city was not to be ignored through the clamor of those who too often formed only a mob.^[130] A letter of Pope Cornelius to Fabius, Bishop of Antioch, has fortunately been preserved by Eusebius,^[131] which gives us the exact number of the Roman clergy of every grade, and a clue^[132] to what may have been the Christian population of Rome, in the middle of the third century. According to these precious statistics, there were then belonging to the Roman clergy 46 priests, 7 deacons, 7 subdeacons, 42 acolytes, 52 exorcists, readers, and ostiarii. Fifteen hundred widows and orphans were provided for by the church, whose children composed an immense population in the capital of the empire. Hence we may rest assured that deliberations for the election of the Roman pontiff could not have been open to all of either clergy or laity, but must necessarily, in the interests of good order, and by reason of the small size of places of public meetings then possessed by the Christians, have been confined to a select number.

1071The ancient records of the Roman Church reaching back to the beginning of the early middle ages, which have been published by Mabillon and Galletti, show us its clergy divided into three distinct classes—viz., priests, dignitaries, and inferior ministers. The priests were the seven cardinal suburbican bishops and the twenty-eight cardinal-priests; the dignitaries were the archdeacon and the seven palatine judges (prothonotaries-apostolic); the inferior ministers were the subdeacons, acolytes, and notaries without office at court. The laity was likewise divided into three classes—viz., citizens, soldiers, and commoners; i.e., the nobility, the army, and the Third Estate.^[133]

After the death of Pope Zozimus, on the 26th of December, 418, a majority of the clergy and people elected the cardinal-priest Boniface to succeed him. A serious dispute immediately arose. Eulalius, the archdeacon, who, as such, had been practically the most important personage of the Holy See after the pontiff himself, and felt indignant at having been passed over in the election, held possession of the Lateran Palace, where he was chosen pope by a few of the clergy, to whose faction, however, all the deacons and three bishops belonged.^[134] The fear of future contests suggested to Pope Boniface I., who is described by Anastasius as unambitious, of mild character; and devoted to good works, to obtain 1072from the Emperor Honorius, in the year 420, a rescript by which it was decreed that, in the contingency of a double election, neither rival should be pope, but that the clergy and people should proceed to another choice. The decree was almost textually inserted in the canon law.^[135] This difference between St. Boniface and Eulalius, or rather the latter’s schism, gave occasion to the first interference of the secular arm in the election of the Roman pontiffs. St. Hilary, who was elected in the year 461, convened a council of forty-eight bishops at Rome, and, among other provisions for filling worthily the Holy See, declared that no pope should ever appoint his own successor. Despite this recent enactment, Boniface II.—in whose favor, however, it must be said that he sought to preclude, as even a greater evil than a passing violation of the canons, the threatened interference of the Gothic king, who wanted to put a partisan on the papal throne—called a council at St. Peter’s in the year 531, and there designated the celebrated deacon Vigilius as his coadjutor with future succession. Subsequently, repenting his action, he called another council, and with his own hand burned the paper appointing him.^[136]

Although the actual naming of his successor by the pope has never been tolerated, there have been several, and some very opportune, cases in which a pope on the point of death has recommended a particular person, more or less efficaciously, to the body of electors as one well fitted to succeed to the vacant throne. This was done by 1073St. Gregory VII., who proposed three candidates to the cardinals—namely, Desiderius, Cardinal-Abbot of Monte Casino; Otho, Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia; and Hugh, Archbishop of Lyons—and particularly recommended the election of the first as the only one of the three who was in Italy at the time. Desiderius became Pope Victor III. Other similar, but not always equally successful, recommendations were made by popes of that era. In order finally to put the strongest official check upon the election of his own successor by a pope, Pius IV., after exposing in consistory his age and infirmities, reminded the cardinals that he was well aware how under his predecessor, Paul IV., the question was mooted whether this could be done, and that some theologians and cardinals held to the affirmative,^[137] but that he would pronounce in the negative, and intended to issue a bull—as in fact he did, on the 22d of September, 1561^[138]—declaring that no pope could do so, even with the consent of the Sacred College. His immediate predecessor had reaffirmed in 1558 an ordinance increasing the penalties of its violation, which had originally been passed over a thousand years before by Pope Symmachus in a council of seventy-two bishops convened at Rome in the year 499, forbidding, under pain of excommunication and loss of all dignities, to treat of a successor during the lifetime of the reigning pontiff.^[139] From this we learn how some of the best and greatest popes have tried to frame such wise provisions as might 1074assure an untainted election to the Papacy; yet they could not succeed in every case, because even the most stringent laws must be well executed to be effective, and must find docile subjects to obey them. The Romans do certainly appear to have been a stiff-necked people during many generations; and while we think it ungenerous continually to throw in their teeth the wretched opinion St. Bernard must have had of them, as we see by his treatise De Consideratione, addressed to Pope Eugene III., and hardly fair in the annalist Muratori to transfer so much of the blame for factious elections from the German emperors to the Roman populace, the least that even their best friend can honestly say is that they might have done better.^[140]

The election of the pope, says Cardinal Borgia,^[141] was perfectly free during the first four centuries, being made by the clergy in presence of the people; but in process of time, as the papal dignity increased in wealth and splendor of temporal authority, it often became an object of human ambition, of which secular rulers were not slow to avail themselves, that by iniquitous bargains and preconcerted plans they might bind, if possible, the priesthood to the empire, and derive the immense advantage of the spiritual power administered by a subject or a dependant. The first instance of direct interference by the state in a papal election—for the decision in the case of Boniface and the anti-pope was an arbitration invited by the church—appears 1075towards the close of the fifth century. Odoacer, a Gothic chief of the tribe of the Heruli, having deposed Romulus Augustulus, in whom the Western Empire came to an end, was proclaimed King of Italy, rejecting the imperial style of Cæsar and Augustus for a title which he expressly created for himself. It would seem—although even this is not beyond dispute—that Pope Simplicius had requested Odoacer, in whom the powers of the state were now vested, to stand ready, in the common interests of order and good government, to repress the civil commotions which he foresaw were likely to arise after his death on the election of a successor. However this may be, the king went beyond a merely repressive measure, and, pretending that Simplicius had commissioned him to do so, published an edict on the pope’s death in 483, forbidding the clergy and people of Rome to elect a successor without his intervention or that of his lieutenant, the prefect of the prætorium. When, therefore, the elective assembly met in St. Peter’s to fill the vacant see, Basil the patrician came forward and claimed in his master’s name, and by virtue of the dying wish and even command of Simplicius, the right of regulating its acts and of confirming the election it might make. This pretension was firmly repelled, and, disregarding the tyrant, Felix III. was elected on March 8, 483. Baronius is of opinion that Simplicius never addressed such a requisition to the king, but that the story of his having done so was fabricated a few years later by the party of Lawrence, the anti-pope. The document purporting to emanate from Simplicius was rejected by a Roman council in 502 without further investigating its genuineness, 1076than by exposing that it lacked the pope’s signature, and was in any case opposed to the sacred canons and ipso facto null and void.^[142] On November 22, 498, St. Symmachus was elected pope, but a minority set up a certain Lawrence, and both were consecrated on the same day. Civil strife was imminent, and, although the most regular mode of action would have been to call a council of the provincial bishops, delay was too dangerous, and the prompt interference of Theodoric was asked and submitted to.

Although this monarch was an Arian, he had protected the Catholics on many occasions, and had for prime minister the celebrated Cassiodorus, whose virtues, justice, and wisdom were renowned throughout Italy. Such considerations as these must have led the Roman clergy to submit a purely ecclesiastical matter to the court of Ravenna. On the advice of his minister the king decided that the one who had been first elected and had received the greatest number of votes should be recognized as the legitimate pope. Both conditions were verified in Symmachus. His first pontifical act was to summon a council in the basilica of St. Peter on March 1, 499, to regulate more effectively the mode of future elections. Seventy-two bishops, sixty-seven priests, and five deacons composed the council. Three canons were drawn up relative to this matter. By the first it was ordained that if any clergyman be convicted of having given or promised his suffrage for the pontificate to any aspirant during the pope’s lifetime he shall be deposed from his office; 1077by the second it was provided that if the pope die suddenly, and a unanimous election cannot be reached, the candidate receiving a majority of the votes shall be declared elected; by the third immunity from prosecution was promised to accomplices who should reveal the intrigues of their principals to obtain an unfair election.^[143]

Theodoric the Goth, having once been appealed to, now thought to take the initiative in the election of a successor to John I., whom he had left to die of starvation and neglect on his return from Constantinople, where he had spoken rather according to his conscience than in favor of the Arians, as the king expected. On his recommendation St. Felix IV. was elected pope on the 12th of July, 526. The Roman clergy and senate protested against this stretch of royal authority, although they had no objection to the nominee, who was simple, mild, and charitable. The affair was not adjusted until a compromise was effected under Athalaric, whereby the Roman clergy by their votes, and the Roman people by their assent, were to elect the Roman pontiff, who would then be confirmed by the king as a matter of course. The popes were elected in this way until the extinction of the Gothic kingdom of Italy in the person of Teias, who was defeated and killed by Narses, general of Justinian, in the year 553. The Greek emperor, having recovered his sway in Italy, continued the abuse, to which the Romans had submitted only through fear of the barbarians, and arrogated to himself and successors the right of confirming the election of the pope. Hence, as 1078Baronius remarks, arose the prudent custom at Rome of electing to the Papacy those members of the clergy who had been Apocrisiarii—i.e., agents or nuncios of the Holy See at Constantinople, where it was presumed they had won the favor of the court and become versed in matters of state. Thus the right of confirmation was reduced in practice to a mere formality, although in principle ever so wrong. In this way were elected Vigilius in 550, St. Gregory I. in 590, Sabinian in 604, Boniface III. in 607, and others who were personally known to the Byzantine rulers.

Avarice, or a love of money under some pretext or another, was a besetting sin of the Greeks, and from it arose a new and more degrading condition imposed on papal elections. The imperial sanction was given only on payment by the Holy See of a tax of 3,000 golden solidi, a sum equal to thirteen thousand dollars of our money.^[144] The Emperor Constantine Pogonatus, at the request of the papal legates to the Fourth General Council of Constantinople in 681, exempted the Holy See from the further payment of the tax. He was moved to do so by the sanctity of St. Agatho; but he still retained the assumed right of forbidding the pope’s consecration until his election had been confirmed. A few years later, however, he granted a constitution to Benedict II., his personal friend, and to whose guardianship he left his two sons, Justinian (II.) and Heraclius, in which he for ever abrogated this arbitrary law. The concession was ungratefully revoked by Justinian; and Conon, who 1079was elected on October 21, 686, was obliged to ask the consent of the exarch of Ravenna, viceroy of the emperor, to his consecration. This necessity generally occasioned a delay of from six weeks to two months. The exarchs of Ravenna, having command of the troops and the key to the imperial treasury in the west, felt themselves in a position to abuse authority and try to set up creatures of their own in Rome. Often did the Roman clergy and many popes protest against their irregular acts. The choice of Pelagius II., in 578, was not submitted to the customary ratification, because the Lombards around Rome had cut off all communication with the outer world.

The historian Novaes says that although the Holy See resisted the interference of secular princes, yet the turbulent spirit of the Romans, often stirred up by unscrupulous ministers or by the sovereigns themselves, obliged the popes to have recourse to these same princes to maintain order at their consecration. Nothing, we think, better confirms the necessity of a temporal dominion whereby the popes can exclude the exercise of foreign influence in Rome, and themselves vindicate the character of good government for which they are responsible. Papal elections were of an absolutely peaceful nature only after Goths, Lombards, Greeks, and Germans ceased to support an armed force in Rome or its vicinity. Guarantees are deceitful; and a mere personal sovereignty of the pope without a territory attached would be insufficient to assure the independence of the Holy See.

A very remarkable law found its way into Gratian’s decree, under the name of Pope Stephen, by which it is ordained that the newly-elected 1080pontiff shall be consecrated in presence of the imperial ambassadors.^[145] The learned are divided in their opinion about which pope passed this law. Baronius, Papebroch, Natalis Alexander, and others attribute it to Stephen IV., elected in 816; Pagi inclines to Stephen VI., alias VII.; Mansi to Deusdedit, elected in 615; while some think that it belongs to John IX., because it is found among the acts of a council held by him in 898. Novaes suggests that this council may only have given a more solemn sanction to an older law. When Eugene II. was elected on the 5th of June, 824, he concerted with Lothair, son of the Emperor Louis, who had named him King of Italy and his colleague in the empire, to put a stop to cabals and disorders among the Roman people. He issued a decree enjoining upon the Roman clergy to swear fealty to the Frankish emperors, but with this significant reservation: “saving the faith that I have pledged to the successor of St. Peter”—Salva fide quam repromisi Domino Apostolico^[146]—and not to consent to an uncanonical or factious election of a pope. The same pope also voluntarily offered to bind the Roman pontiffs to be consecrated in the presence of the so-called Rex Romanorum, if he were in the city, otherwise of his envoy.^[147] Pagi thinks that this was done to propitiate in advance these growing monarchs of the north, and distract them from the idea of continuing the policy of the Eastern emperors, who, as we have seen, would not allow the popes to proceed to consecration 1081until their election had been confirmed. Eugene’s act seems to us to have been a subtle stroke of diplomacy. While it flattered, by conveying the impression that the presence of Cæsar (as he was pompously called) or of his legates gave splendor and magnificence to the ceremony of consecration, it disarmed the emperor by implying the right of the popes to be consecrated at their own convenience; for if his meaning had been that the presence of the king or of his ambassadors were a necessary condition to the legality of the act, he would have deliberately placed himself and successors in the same relation to these new rulers that his predecessors had been obliged, though under protest, to assume toward the emperors of the East—which is manifestly absurd.

Nevertheless, both the Frank and Saxon emperors frequently claimed the right to something more than a mere honorary part in papal elections, which led to long years of party strife and discord between church and state. Leo IV., in 847, confirmed the decree of Eugene, although, on account of the Saracens around Rome, he was consecrated without waiting for the imperial ambassadors; and the same was the case, but without any ostensible reason, with Stephen V., alias VI. This shows that the presence of the envoys was an honorary privilege, which conferred no authority to go back of or revise the election itself, as Hadrian III., Stephen’s immediate predecessor, expressly affirmed in a decree given by Martinus Polonus,^[148] Mabillon,^[149] and Pagi.^[150]

1082It is but fair to confess that this decree is not considered authentic by all; but what historical document has not been called in question by some hypercritic or other, especially in Germany? That it is not apocryphal is shown by the fact that one of Hadrian’s successors—John IX., elected in 898—annulled it in view of the peace ensured by the presence of the ambassadors, and restored the earlier ordinance of Eugene.

The text of the canon law, and especially the passage Canonico ritu et consuetudine, has been often appealed to by Cæsarists and Protestant historians, as though it demonstrated that a papal election not made according to its requirements was uncanonical and invalid. In the first place, Cardinal Garampi^[151] remarks that Eugene’s decree was a personal privilege Advocatiæ given to the princes of the Carlovingian line; and in the second place Thomassin observes upon John’s decree^[152] that the imperial ambassadors were not admitted to the election, but only to the subsequent consecration; that they were there to overawe the turbulent; and that in time their presence became a custom and was looked on as a part, so to speak, of the external rite of consecration. It had, besides, become so useful as a repressive measure against the enemies of the Holy See that it received the high sanction of being countenanced by the canon law itself. Pope Nicholas II., in the eleventh century, explained the text Quia Sancta in the same sense. It must be said, to the discredit of the Othos and the Henrys, that they too often slipped from the inch of privilege to the ell 1083of (pretended) right, and went so far as to interfere in a direct and absolute sense at papal elections, intruding some less worthy subjects into the Papacy; but when once these occupied the seat of Peter they were to be recognized and respected on the same principle that the high-priests were in the irregular age of the Seleucidæ and the Romans when they sat upon the chair of Moses. Yet even the imperial influence, says Kenrick,^[153] was beneficially exercised in several instances, particularly those of Clement II. and St. Leo IX. Dr. Constantine Höfler has written a work^[154] replete with information about the German popes and the physical aspect, the morals, manners, and customs of the Romans in their time. Charles Hemans’ books (we cannot seriously call them works) on Ancient and Mediæval Christianity and Sacred Art in Italy, while they show considerable acquaintance with the best authorities on the subject, manifest a detestable animus against the Holy See, which shows their writer to be as great an adept in the “art of putting things” as the far more learned author of the eight-volume History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages, Ferdinand Gregorovius. While the corruption of some popes and the depravity of the tenth century have been exaggerated by many historians, the condition of the Papacy at that time is certainly a warning against the interference of secular princes in the elections; for, as the great Baronius remarks (ad an. 900), Nihil penitus Ecclesiæ Romanæ contingere potest funestius, tetrius nihil atque lugubrius, quam si principes seculares 1084in Romanorum Pontificum electiones manus immittant.^[155]

In the middle of the eleventh century a movement was begun to reform the method of conducting papal elections, which eventually limited them within the legitimate circle of ecclesiastical prerogatives, totally excluding the direct influence of the inferior clergy and the aristocratic and popular element of the laity. Pope Nicholas II., having assembled a synod of one hundred and thirteen bishops in the Lateran Palace in the month of April, 1059, passed a law to the following effect: On the death of the pope the cardinal-bishops shall first meet in council and with the utmost diligence treat of a successor; they shall next take joint action with the cardinal-priests, and finally consider the wishes of the rest of the clergy and of the Roman people. If a worthy subject can be found among the members of the Roman (higher) clergy itself, he is to be preferred, otherwise a foreigner shall be elected; so that, however, the honor and regard due to our beloved son Henry, now king, and soon, God grant, to be emperor, which we have seen proper to show to him and to his successors who may personally apply for it, be not diminished. If a proper election cannot take place in Rome, it may be held anywhere else.^[156] In the year 1061 another synod was held, in which it was distinctly stated that the mere fact of election in the foregoing manner placed the elect in possession of plenary apostolic 1085authority; consequently, the emperor’s confirmation was excluded, in the sense that without it the election was invalid. From this period, although the struggle was not yet over, the Papacy was completely emancipated from any kind of subjection to the empire. Alexander II., successor to Nicholas, did not communicate his election to the court; and although St. Gregory VII., glorious Hildebrand, did do so, it was partly from prudence in view of the excitement in Germany occasioned by the setting up of the anti-pope Cadolaus in resentment for his predecessor’s neglect, and partly from his sense of honor, lest it should be thought (since he had taken a principal part in enacting the statute of Pope Nicholas) that he availed himself of an advantage which he had himself created—artfully, as suspicious-minded persons might think—in anticipation of one day ascending the papal chair. He was the last pope who ever informed the emperor of his election before proceeding to be consecrated and enthroned. The great Catholic powers still continue to exercise a measure of influence in these elections, but of a purely advisory character, except in the case of those few which enjoy the privilege of veto, or the esclusiva, as the Romans say. At the Third General Council of the Lateran, held in the year 1179 by Alexander III., a most important advance was made in the manner of holding the elections. The right of the cardinals to elect, without reference to the rest of the Roman clergy or of the people, was affirmed, and a majority of two-thirds of their votes required for a valid election. This law was readily approved by the bishops and members of the council, and incorporated in the canon law, where it is found among the decretals of Gregory IX.^[157]

1086

HOW STEENWYKERWOLD WAS SAVED.

I.

A few straggling lights gleamed pale and fitfully through the stormy mist as the travellers came to the foot of the principal street in Steenwykerwold on the night of December 23, 1831. The wind howled fiercely and the place was apparently deserted; no one was found to brave the force of the sleety tempest save Floog and his companion, and the weather-beaten, broken-nosed “Admiral” that once did duty as figure-head for a Baltic trader of that name, and now stood sentinel at the door of Mathias Pilzer, the innkeeper, scowling defiance at the elements. The hail had drifted and accumulated in heaps against outlying angles of walls, and filled the narrow gutters. The progress of the travellers, which the storm had impeded, was now interrupted altogether and they came to a dead halt. The prospect was indeed discouraging, and the cheerless gloom of the situation seemed to enter into the soul of the boy; for he made a sudden movement towards a street doorway which afforded a little shelter, and, pulling his woollen cap tightly down over his eyes, began to cry.

1087“Ferret,” said his companion, “if you don’t stop that blubbering I’ll take you back again to-morrow to paint dolls at Mme. Gemmel’s; and see,” he added somewhat more soothingly, as he caught the flicker of a candle through Pilzer’s window, “here we are at the inn.”

The Ferret, thus threatened and consoled, brushed away his tears with his sleeve, emitting a muffled grunt. He had commenced with a howl, but, as if finding the pitch too high, he lowered it suddenly and ended with a sort of guttural, fractured sob; then seizing the other by the skirt, in this order of procession they reached Pilzer’s.

Boreas, Euroclydon, Eolus! whew, you gusty deities, your rude familiarities are the reverse of endearing, and we, alas! have not discovered the secret of propitiating you. Yet you deepen the enchanted halo encircling the ruddy fireside by the very force of contrast, as you wail dismally at the door, rattle the window-pane, or shriek down the chimney in your baffled efforts to effect an entrance.

The fatigue of their journey was soon forgotten by the wayfarers, their misery giving way to the placid emotions caused by an anticipated enjoyment of the warmth and well-earned repose so near at hand.

There was much to study in these two, because there was so little to discover. The elder was a man whose appearance guarded with sphinx-like obstinacy the secret of his age. He might be thirty or he might be sixty—no one could tell, and it was abundantly evident that few cared. He was tall and spare, with features which, if remarkable at all, were rendered negatively so by the absence of all salient characteristics, except a certain peculiarity about the eyes, 1088one of which was brown, and the other, the left, a weak, watery gray. Such was Floog, the only name by which he was known; if he ever had any other it is buried with him.

The other member of the duo, of whom you have had a glimpse already, was nicknamed “The Ferret,” by what authority I cannot say—probably according to the accommodating law of contrariety, for there was nothing pertaining to him at all suggestive of that sprightly little quadruped. The ideal curve of beauty was straightened and flattened into obtuse angles in his contour in a way to make old Apelles or Phidias lament, however prized he might be as a subject for the pencil of Teniers. His features, too, were wanting in the seraphic beam of Fra Bartolomeo’s cherubs. Nevertheless, in form and feature he was sufficiently quaint to make one laugh at and love him. At a little distance he resembled a well-stuffed pillow on short legs. On closer view a head was discernible, something like those sometimes seen on old-fashioned door-knockers. Large, puffy cheeks, half-hiding a pretty little turn-up nose, a pair of small but bright blue eyes, no eyebrows, but an enormous mouth, and still more enormous chin—these belonged to a face in hue and texture very like putty, and formed altogether a combination which, if not very beautiful, had this counterbalancing attraction: that it was somewhat out of the commonplace.

But no delineation of pen or pencil could do justice to his expression. The wells of laughter and of tears, assuredly close beneath the surface, were for ever commingling in his organization; and so evenly were the external symptoms balanced that my grandaunt, a close 1089observer, who had seen him often (and from whom, by the way, we had most of these details), could not for the life of her tell whether he was going to laugh or to cry at times when, in fact, he had no desire or intention to do either, so indeterminate was his habitual and passive expression.

The wooden hands of Pilzer’s Dutch clock pointed twenty-five minutes past eleven as these itinerants entered. Mine host was half-sitting, half-reclining in a large, square, straw-bottomed chair just inside of and facing the glass door that separated the travellers’ parlor from the front part of his premises. On hearing them enter he slowly roused from his semi-lethargy, and, taking his long pipe from between his lips, eyed the new-comers with a dubious glance, as if not quite satisfied whether they were customers or cut-throats, when Floog, drawing nearer to the glass door, brought him within range of that gentleman’s mild eye and reassured him. Floog on his part hesitated with an embarrassed air, and looked cautiously around, as if he had got into a coffin-maker’s shop by mistake. Presently he plucked up courage, and beckoning The Ferret, who stood sniffling at the front door, to follow him, advanced and knocked timidly at the dividing door.

The presiding genius of the “Admiral” was a very Machiavel of innkeepers. An experience of twenty-seven years had taught him a system of deportment toward, and treatment of, his customers measured and regulated—a sort of mental gradient, of which the gauge was the prospective length of his guest’s purse; and, to do him justice, he seldom erred in his calculations. On opening the door and confronting 1090the strangers it was plainly visible that he was about to commence at zero in his welcome; for there was little prospect of pecuniary reward in the appearance of the man, his speculative gains being rendered still more doubtful by the additional allowance of a liberal discount for the appearance of the boy. His first word of chilly greeting removed all misgiving at one fell swoop; for, true to his system, at zero he began.

“What do you want at this time o’ night?” Just then he caught sight of a large portmanteau or travelling-wallet which Floog on entering had deposited on the floor. It was a favorable diversion, for no sooner had Pilzer espied it than his scale ascended two or three degrees, and, without waiting for an answer to his first inquiry, he added in a slightly altered tone: “What can I do for you?”

“I want lodging for me and my nephew,” said Floog bravely, and with a cheerful disregard of syntax. “We can pay for it; we’re not tramps.”

“This is a lovely night, and a pretty hour of this lovely night to come looking for lodging,” said the innkeeper, with facile irony, at which he was an adept; “but if ye are respectable, and can prove it, and let me know what brings ye here when all honest folk is abed, I’ll see what I can do.”

If Floog considered the last part of this speech with reference to its applicability to the maker of it, he kept his thoughts discreetly to himself.

“We are strangers in the town. We arrived from Arnhem an hour ago, and this is the only public-house we can find open. This boy’s father, Mynheer Underdonk, the merchant, died in Amsterdam 1091last Thursday, and they sent me a letter to bring the boy, and make no delay, as they want to make a settlement for him. You see,” he went on, growing confidential, “my brother left home eight years ago and no one knew what became of him. His poor forsaken wife died, and I took care of the orphan.”

All this he uttered rapidly, with few pauses, as if he had learnt it by heart. So he had. Alas! poor Floog, thou wert no hero, not even morally; but shall we, entrenched in a castle of virtue, thrown stones at thee? No, albeit there was no more truth in thy story than suited thy own purposes.

II.

The Ferret was of ancient and noble lineage. There, that secret is out. Frank like himself, his historian scorns the subterfuge of keeping it till the end for the purpose of giving éclat to his exit, as they do in romances and on the stage. He was descended from Adam and Eve. This I am prepared to maintain in the face of the world, learned or unlearned. If any one wishes to be considered as descended from an oyster or an atom, we who are not so ambitious shall not cavil at their genealogy, but hope they find their protoplasms subjects of pleasant reflection. As for my hero, he was of a different breed. Whether the bars in his escutcheon were dexter or sinister did not concern him and need not concern us. Heraldry, in fact, disowned him; therein, however, heraldry was no worse than his own father. In his tenth year he was taken from the Asylum for Foundlings and indentured to Mme. Gemmel, who kept a manufactory of toys at Arnhem. On the day of his departure 1092he went out into the large paved yard surrounded by an unbroken line of low stone buildings—his well-known and familiar playground, the only Arcadia he had ever known. Now that he was to bid it and his childish companions a long good-by, he felt irresolute and the farewell stuck in his throat. He tried hard to be brave, while little Hans, his inseparable playmate and bedfellow, stood regarding him with a sullen scowl, as if he considered it a personal insult to be thus suddenly left alone. The poor Ferret was entirely at his wits’ end and quite dumbfounded. Another look at Hans broke the unutterable spell; for he saw stealing down the chubby cheek of that smirched cherub a big tear, marking its course by a light streak on his smutty little face. Gulping down his sobs and forcing back the tears that now suffused his own eyes, he laid his hand lovingly on the shoulder of little Hans, and, bending down until their faces were on a level, he looked at him, and said in a voice broken by varying emotions and the poignant sorrow of childhood:

“Don’t—don’t cry, Hans; and when—and when I earn a hundred guilders I will come back for you, and we will have lots of puddin’ and new clothes, and I will buy you a pair of new skates.”

Then taking from his trousers’ pocket all his treasures—a large piece of gingerbread and a small old knife with a broken blade—he pressed his little friend to take them, forcing them into his unresisting hand, looked around once by way of final adieu, and ran through the passage that led to the front hall, where Mme. Gemmel’s man was waiting for him, and left poor little Hans bellowing as if his heart would break.

1093The moral supervision exercised by Mme. Gemmel over her new charge was radical. Its cardinal principles were, first, the duty of obedience and gratitude, and, secondly, the healthfulness of abstinence. These principles she inculcated by precept and enforced in practice by prescribing due penalties for their infraction. The good lady taught her apprentice, by every means within her power, that his life-long devotion to her service would ill repay her for the inestimable blessing she conferred in removing him from the Foundling Asylum and taking him under her own fostering roof. She was mindful of his health, too, for among her sanitary tenets was one to the effect that butter is injurious to immature years; and this she was in the habit of persistently enforcing for the special benefit of her charge. Inasmuch as temptation is dangerous, especially to the weak, she prudently adopted preventive measures by removing at once the temptation and the butter whenever he appeared at meals. So well did he profit by her discipline that after six months’ involuntary practice of it he determined to run away.

In spite of these drawbacks, in spite of the discipline and the dry bread, he made famous progress at his trade, and felt an artist’s glow of enthusiasm whenever he finished to his satisfaction the staring blue eyes and carmine cheeks of his waxen beauties. He felt, Pygmalion like, able to fall in love with them, could he but find the Promethean secret—not, indeed, that his thoughts ever took the classic shape, for he had never heard of the old Grecian fable; these were only the vague and undefined feelings of his heart. True it is he 1094had little else to love, so that his affections, being narrowed down to the dolls, increased for them in the ratio that it diminished for their owner.