Volume 27 — CHAPTER III. CAPTAIN LEOPOLD INTRODUCES HIS FRIEND. (continued 4)

But the best of Lope’s work is many degrees above the best of Scribe’s. In ingenuity and in originality, and in the conduct of the business of the stage, the Spaniard is at least the equal of the Frenchman, while in the depicting of passion he is by far the superior. Scribe was incapable of anything at all approaching the sombre and inevitable conclusion of the Star of Seville, appalling with the inexorable logic of fate. Mrs. Frances Anne Kemble has produced a spirited English play suggested by it, of which Lord Holland has given a long analysis with translated extracts. As he justly remarks, no mere relation of the plots of Lope’s plays would give a sufficient idea of the attractions they possess, “nor can they be collected from a mere perusal of detached passages. The chief merit of his plays is a certain spirit and animation which pervades the whole, but which is not to be preserved in disjointed limbs of the composition.”

It is easy to find the reason for Lope de Vega’s theatrical activity. He was poor, and play-writing was profitable. He says somewhere that poverty and himself formed a copartnership to work for the stage. At the close of the sixteenth century Spain was divided into several almost independent provinces, and there was no interprovincial copyright; the bookseller of Castile could reprint and sell for his own profit the successful work first published in Leon. An author in those days could not even get pay for advance-sheets. Under these circumstances publishers naturally paid authors little or nothing. Literature was a labor of love. The dramatic taste, however, of the Spanish people was increasing. The two companies of actors gradually grew to forty, and the forty audiences asked for novelty. The managers endeavoring to satisfy this demand, the consumption of comedies was something enormous. There was a uniform price fixed in advance: a comedy was worth five hundred reals, equivalent to about forty or fifty dollars of our money. The reward was not great, but the labor was light—at least to Lope. Dramatic work paid; other literature did not. Lope would have been certainly justified in devoting himself exclusively to the drama. He might labor in other fields; on the stage he ruled. What is done quickly may die quickly, and few of Lope’s plays hold the stage to-day even in Spain. But if his plays are not seen, his influence is visible 829in the drama of France, of England, of Germany, and of Spain, his own country, of the literature of which he and Calderon and Cervantes are the greatest glories. Calderon was his follower and Cervantes was his friend. Although it has been said they were at enmity, it is known that Lope de Vega praised Cervantes, and the author of Don Quixote generously eulogized his more successful rival thus: “At last appeared that prodigy of nature, the great Lope de Vega, and established his monarchy on the stage. He conquered and reduced under his jurisdiction every actor and author in the kingdom.... And though there have been many who have attempted the same career, all their works together would not equal in quantity what this single man has composed.”

And Cervantes wrote these lines almost twenty years before Lope de Vega’s death, almost twenty years before he had ceased composing. It is with the following brilliant paragraph that Mr. Ticknor, always strongly prejudiced in favor of Cervantes, begins his historical criticism of Lope’s life and labor, and with it we end: “It is impossible to speak of Cervantes as the great genius of the Spanish nation without recalling Lope de Vega, the rival who far surpassed him in contemporary popularity, and rose, during the lifetime of both, to a degree of fame which no Spaniard had yet attained, and which has since been reached by few of any country.”

ENGLISH TORIES AND CATHOLIC EDUCATION IN IRELAND.

The motives which impel men to their best actions are not always, perhaps they are not generally, the best possible motives. It is not improbable that more men are driven to the tribunal of penance by attrition than are led thither by contrition. If this be true of men in their individual and private affairs, it is still more strikingly true of politicians and statesmen in their public acts. He would indeed be fanciful and credulous who should imagine that Mr. Gladstone, in framing, advocating, and insisting upon the passage of his bill for the disestablishment and disendowment of the Protestant Church in Ireland, was inspired by a pure love of abstract justice and right, and a disinterested desire to relieve the Irish people from a flagrantly unjust burden and a crying wrong. He saw as clearly as any one that this wrong existed, but he perceived also that by removing it he would win popular support for himself and his party. It is tolerably safe to say that had Mr. Gladstone imagined that the passage of the bill for the disestablishment of the church would have resulted in the expulsion of himself and his party from power, he would not have urged the measure. In this case there were two motives: one positively 830and abstractly good, the other good in the estimation of those who believed that the continuance of power in the hands of the Liberal party was desirable. The latter incentive was the ruling one. Mr. Gladstone, we believe, would not have advocated a measure which he knew to be bad, although this advocacy might have secured him an extension of power. Nor would he have insisted upon the adoption of a measure which he knew to be good had he known that this insistence would deprive him of power. But he saw that while the disestablishment and disendowment of the alien church in Ireland would be an act of justice in itself, it would also be a good political stroke, tending to strengthen his own position and to give a longer lease of power to his party.

One need not trouble himself to assign higher motives than these to the Tory government, which, to the surprise and delight of the Catholics in Ireland, has brought forward a really fair scheme for intermediate education in Ireland, and seems honestly disposed to carry it at the present session of Parliament. Just as we write the bill has passed the House of Lords, and is about to be brought up for final passage in the Commons. The queen’s speech at the opening of Parliament contained a promise that a bill for the promotion of intermediate education in Ireland should be introduced; but it was not until events made probable the speedy dissolution of Parliament and a general election that this promise was redeemed. It is not uncharitable to suppose that the government felt it necessary to have something to offer to Ireland in the event of an appeal to the constituencies under circumstances that would make every vote important. The bill passed its second reading in the House of Lords on the 28th of June—a moment when it was still possible that England might soon find herself embroiled in a foreign war, and when it was given out in governmental circles that Parliament was to be dissolved and a general election ordered. The third reading and final passage of the bill in the Lords took place some two weeks afterwards. Meanwhile the position of affairs had somewhat altered: the conclusion of the labors of the Congress of Berlin and the disclosure of the Treaty of Constantinople had greatly strengthened the hands of the government; the Opposition gave evidence of demoralization and discord in its own ranks, and toward the close of July the inspired journals announced that Parliament would not be dissolved this year, inasmuch as the general approval of the course of the government was too plain to be misunderstood or denied. The Irish Education Bill came up for its second reading in the House of Commons under these circumstances, and its friends fancied that they discovered a little less earnestness on the part of the government in pushing it forward than was displayed under the more critical circumstances in the House of Lords. Still, the probabilities are that the bill will pass and receive the royal assent before the close of the present session; and if this be so, the Tory government of Earl Beaconsfield will go down to posterity as the first administration which has had the courage, the wisdom, and the good-will to award to Ireland anything like justice in the matter of education.

The bill provides for a system 831of payments by results, and practically is identical with the system which Mr. Isaac Butt laid before the writer during a conversation in London four years ago. We are unaware whether the Lord Chancellor, Lord Cairns—who is, like Mr. Butt, a Protestant, an Irishman, and a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin—has availed himself of Mr. Butt’s ideas in the preparation of the measure; but this is not at all improbable. Mr. Butt has expressed his cordial approval of the measure. To what extent the Tory government may have been able to inspire such organs of public opinion as the Saturday Review, and such writers as Matthew Arnold in the Fortnightly, we cannot say; but the fact is that for the first time in its existence the Saturday Review has recognized and defended the right of Irish Catholics to be educated in the way that they considered proper, and that Mr. Arnold seems suddenly to have arrived at the conclusion that the denial of a Catholic university in Ireland is a wicked, absurd, and mischievous freak of English Puritanism. The development of opinion in the Saturday Review is startlingly rapid. In a remarkable article written before the introduction of Lord Cairns’ bill the Review said that “the injustice of refusing either to give the Irish Roman Catholics a university or to allow them to set up one for themselves is so patent that if the demand for a charter were once more put forward it could scarcely be very long resisted.” But in the same pages it warned the Irish Catholics that they must not expect to receive anything like an endowment from the state for denominational education:

“The demand for a state endowment of a Roman Catholic university, or of a Roman Catholic college in a mixed university,” we were told, “may be perfectly just, but it is at the same time perfectly impracticable. For this purpose the surplus revenues of the Irish Disestablished Church will undoubtedly be treated as money belonging to the nation, and unless a radical and almost miraculous change should come over the whole mind and temper of the English people, not a shilling of it will be devoted to a denominational object. This determination on their part may be quite illogical, but it is very firmly rooted. The endowment of a Catholic university or a Catholic college may continue to furnish the text for an annual motion and for any number of annual speeches, but it will do nothing more. The late government attempted to meet the difficulty by establishing a university in which the subjects upon which Romanists and non-Romanists most differ should be temporarily excluded from the university course. Denominational colleges might be incorporated into this university and teach what they liked, but the teaching of the university was to leave burning questions on one side until the university should have become strong enough to run alone, and to decide for itself in what subjects it should give instruction to its students. The scheme fell through.”

Within a few days after this candid expression of opinion the same journal was applauding Lord Cairns’ bill for intermediate education in Ireland, which provides for the application of a certain portion of the surplus revenues of the Disestablished Church for the support of schools that certainly will be “denominational.” True, the money is not to be given directly in payment for religious instruction, but it is to be given in payment to teachers who will impart religious instruction to their pupils. “Not a shilling will be devoted to a denominational object,” said the Review one week; but a fortnight afterwards it was delighted with a 832measure that proposed to devote a million sterling for the support of a system which is nothing if it be not “denominational.” We rejoice at this sudden and remarkable conversion without inquiring too closely how it came. Catholics everywhere, and Irish Catholics especially, should rejoice when organs of opinion like the Saturday Review speak of a measure that is satisfactory to the hierarchy, the clergy, and the Catholic laity of Ireland as “an honest endeavor to supply Ireland with an article which she really wants, and which nothing but the absurd prejudices of Englishmen has prevented her from attaining before now.” It is certainly encouraging to hear Englishmen told by their most un-Catholic and worldly-minded instructor that in their rejection of Ireland’s claims for Catholic education they have been “singularly unamiable and singularly foolish”; that they have been bent upon educating Irish Catholics in a way in which Irish Catholics have been equally determined not to be educated.

The provisions of Lord Cairns’ bill are briefly these:

“A Board of Intermediate Education of seven commissioners—three to form a quorum—is to be appointed by the lord lieutenant—the members to be removable by him—with two assistant commissioners, who will also act as secretaries and inspectors, at salaries of one thousand pounds each, to be appointed by the same authority. Other officers may, from time to time, be appointed by the board, with the consent of the lord lieutenant and the approval of the treasurer. This board will be a mere examining body, conducting by its officers annual examinations in June and July at convenient local centres over Ireland. The programme of subjects includes six different classes of attainments: (1) languages, literatures, and history of Greece and Rome; (2) the same of England; (3) the same of France, Germany, and Italy; (4) mathematics, including arithmetic and book-keeping; (5) the natural sciences; and (6) another group of subjects to be named by the board. Candidates for examination must show that they have been under instruction in Ireland for the year previous to the date of the examination; and the maximum ages fixed are sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen years respectively for the three years’ course. Certificates, or testamurs, will be given, setting forth the results of successful examinations; graded prizes, and also annual exhibitions, of from twenty to fifty pounds, will be awarded, the condition of attendance for at least one hundred days a year in an intermediate school being required in the latter. Holders of any other exhibitions are to be ineligible. The school in which the boy has attended the required number of days receives a bonus of three pounds should he pass in two subjects, four pounds for three, and five pounds for four of the six subjects of the first year’s course; another grant is increased in like ratio for the second and third years. No subject of religion is to enter into the examination or be paid for. A conscience clause (7), while not requiring any such school to be open to all or any classes, is thus framed to protect religious minorities who may attend: ‘The board shall not make any payment to the managers of any school unless it be shown to the satisfaction of the board that no pupil attending such school is permitted to remain in attendance during the time of any religious instruction which the parents or guardians of such pupil shall not have sanctioned, and that the time for giving such religious instruction is so fixed that no pupil not remaining in attendance is excluded directly or indirectly from the advantages of the secular education given in the school.’ One million from the surplus funds of the Disestablished Church is to form the endowment for this scheme, being, in round numbers, £35,000 a year. The Church Temporalities Commissioners are empowered to borrow this sum, pending the close of the liquidation of the assets. The board may alter and amend the whole scheme, save so as to change its leading principles, and may frame codes and rules and lay them before Parliament, when, if not objected 833to by either House within three weeks, they acquire the force of law.”

The debate in the House of Lords on the second reading of the bill was characterized by a remarkable exhibition of good sense and good feeling among the Protestant members who spoke, while the remarks of the two Catholics who expressed their approval of the measure, Lord O’Hagan and Lord Emly (formerly Mr. Monsell), were discreet and well considered. Lord O’Hagan gave what he properly described as some “startling statistics” concerning the aptitude of Irishmen for fitting themselves for the discharge of public trusts, even under the limited and discouraging conditions of education which had thus far prevailed in Ireland. He showed that England has 72-1/2 per cent. of the population of the United Kingdom, Ireland 17 per cent., and Scotland 10-1/2 per cent. Since 1871 there had been 1,918 places in the excise and customs bestowed in public competition. For these places there had been 11,371 candidates, of whom 11 per cent. were Scotch, 46 per cent. English, and 43 per cent. Irish. Of the places Scotland gained 6 per cent., England 38 per cent., and Ireland 56. Of every 100 Scotch candidates 9 passed, of every 100 English 14, and of every 100 Irish 22.

These figures showed what the youth of Ireland could do when they were educated. But what were their opportunities? As children, up to fifteen they might avail themselves of an excellent primary education, but after that they have few if any opportunities of advancing further. The fact was undeniable that for three hundred years legislation has been directed against education in Ireland, except in a form in which the people would not receive it. The bill now proposed was the first step in the contrary direction, and in Lord O’Hagan’s opinion, if it were administered in the same impartial and fair spirit which had dictated its framing, its results would be most wholesome.

The bill, on the whole, although not perfect, is so great a contrast to all the former educational measures which England has devised for Ireland, and is conceived in so different a spirit, that the Irish Catholics are right in accepting it gladly. It is only to be hoped that the House of Commons will prove to be as reasonable and just as the Lords have been, and allow the bill to pass without mutilating it by mischievous amendments. For half a century England has been tinkering at Irish education, always with the idea that she could compel the Irish to accept Protestant education if Catholic education were made impossible for them. Thus was devised the national system of 1831, the queen’s colleges of 1845, the supplementary charter of 1866, Lord Mayo’s charter scheme of 1867, the unfortunate University Bill introduced by Mr. Gladstone in 1873, the National Teachers’ Act, and Mr. Butt’s University Bill. The English government in their present measure do not storm the Plevna of the religious difficulty; they simply turn it. They do not propose to establish any new institutions, nor to aid the erection of any, nor to subject to inspection and control any of the existing intermediary schools that have been founded by the zeal of the clergy and the charity of the faithful. They leave these alone; but they offer to reward them, and all 834other similar schools that may be founded, by giving prizes to their pupils, and a bonus to the schools themselves of from fifteen to twenty-five dollars for each pupil who meets certain conditions. The Irish Catholic schoolmasters and schoolboys will not be afraid to enter into this competition; on the contrary, they will “leap at it,” and the best results may be expected to follow. More important still, this step, once taken, will lead ere long, by logical consequence, to the settlement of the Irish university question in the same way. Lord Beaconsfield’s administration of the government of England promises to live in history as an epoch of many brilliant and important events; but if under his rule the Catholic education of Ireland is adequately and satisfactorily provided for, that will be really a more lasting and glorious monument to his memory than his diplomatic victories at Berlin, his second conquest of India, or his virtual annexation of Asia Minor to the British crown.

LAC DU SAINT SACREMENT.

Fair in their peace, ’twixt shore and shore,

Lake George’s waters rest,

And fair the great hills, rising o’er,

Lie mirrored on its breast.

The leafy forests hide no tread

Of stealthy Indian foe,

The sunshine gilds no dusky head

In shadow stealing slow.

The calm no hostile navies rend,

Pealeth no threat’ning gun,

Silence and stillness softly blend

Beneath the undimmed sun.

Faded the lilies’ bloom long since

On Horicon’s green mere;

The soldiers of the German prince

Lift not the red cross here.

The stars alone are guardians now

Of this bright forest sea

Whose waves, whatever wind may blow,

Sing freedom’s royalty.

835Ah! fair Lake George, I would thy name

Were changed for one more meet,

That thy bright waters spoke the fame

Of him whose accents sweet

First named thee in a Christian tongue—

His maimed hands raised to bless—

Who, rapturous, round thy beauty flung

Thy Maker’s loveliness.

Who sighed blind Indian souls to lead

Unto their Father’s feet,

To teach strong hands for peace to plead,

Fierce hearts Christ’s cross to greet.

Who bore with awe his Master’s name,

Was bound for His sweet sake,

God’s glory deed and thought should claim,

Knowing no lesser stake.

Who ready stood, for God’s dear love,

Through toil and torture fire

Still with the cross to point above—

A living Christian spire.

O lake beguiling! on that eve

How still thy waters lay,

All hushed in sunshine each green wave

Calm as the golden day.

How full of grace on that blessed eve—

God’s love athwart the sky;

Pure as his balm for souls that grieve

Thy mirror seemed to lie.

Warm as the Love that gave itself

The softened mountains seemed;

Fusing strong tree and rugged shelf,

The wondrous glory streamed.

A burning worship heaven filled,

And breathless it adored,

While through the air, all-reverent, stilled,

The earth’s sweet incense soared.

836Did dreams of France, his own loved France,

The Jesuit’s spirit steep

With thought of hearts that love would trance

As they God’s feast should keep

With myriad lights and thronging flowers,

Strong voices’ mellow peal?

And did he long through those sweet hours

Before his Lord to kneel?

From far cathedral pomp aloof,

And simple, loving hearts,

For columned church the wood’s green roof

Darkened with heathen arts.

Still seemed the glory of the day

The golden hope to give

Of Love Almighty’s deathless sway

O’er nations yet to live.

An echo of St. Thomas’ hymn

Came faintly o’er the wave;

The Jesuit’s eyes with tears grew dim

At thought of souls to save.

And “Bone Pastor, Panis vere,”

His firm lips softly spoke,

O “Jesu, nostri miserere,”

From heart, love-burdened, broke.

And “Lauda Sion, Salvatorem”

Thy glad waves seemed to cry;

While “Lauda Ducem et Pastorem”

Flung back the happy sky.

Lake of the Blessed Sacrament,

That hour won thy name’s grace

As holiest thought of love was lent

To sign thy maiden face.

Its look of heaven as of yore

Still wears thy calm, sweet face;

Alas! that thou shouldst keep no more

Thy first baptismal grace.

837

THE THREE ROSES.

I.

It was at precisely half-past ten, as he satisfied himself by looking at his watch, on the morning of the 17th of June, in the year 1743, that a young gentleman got up from a chair in front of the Café Procope (just then opening with that air of stretching itself, rubbing its eyes, and yawning which marks a café in the ante-meridian hours). He stood for a moment twirling his cane and his moustache alternately, and then, as if suddenly reminded by the look of the café of a great moral duty omitted, stretched himself slightly and yawned prodigiously. It was, to be sure, rather early in the day to begin yawning, except for cafés; but then this young chronologer had his own way of dividing time, and, believing with the poet that the best of all ways to lengthen our days is to snatch a few hours from the night, what was early in the morning for most men was only somewhat late at night for him. It is to be noted, too, since the most trifling incidents in the life of a hero are worthy of record, that he yawned with such admirable self-possession, with such a mingling of good-will and graceful languor; he had so much the air of giving his whole mind to it, and at the same time of being so used to yawning that he really didn’t care so much for it after all, that you saw at once he was a man of distinction, to whom a yawn was not, as to most of us, a rare luxury, but a daily, nay, an hourly, a half-hourly, necessary of life.

Much might here be said, if space permitted, of a highly instructive nature, on the philosophy of yawning and its many varieties: the go-to-bed yawn; the get-up yawn; the tired yawn, the yawn of simple lassitude; the good-humored yawn, which takes itself as an excellent joke; the peevish yawn, which denies itself acridly as if it were a crime; the writer’s yawn and the reader’s yawn (quod Jupiter omen avertat!); the chronic yawn and the fixed yawn which merges into the drawl; the imitative yawn, into which unwary grandmothers are seduced by wicked little boys with slowly-flapping palm; the bored yawn, which is a protest against the world in general; the well-bred yawn, which is a protest against the immediate company, and is practised only in solitude. (It is, of course, the last-named sort in which our hero indulges.) There is a great deal of character, too, in a yawn, from your timid little lady’s yawn, shrinking away and hiding behind fan or handkerchief, or with hypocritical feminine art so moulding itself that, like Lucy Fountain’s, “it glides into society a smile,” to your open, hearty, man’s yawn, showing all its grinders shamelessly, as if it were a fine natural prospect one ought to be grateful for. Napoleon judged men, as he led them, by their noses;^[166] a true philosopher would classify them by their yawns.

Meantime, however, we are leaving 838our hero yawning at the risk of dislocating his jaw and of setting the reader to keep him company. Let us, therefore, resume. Having indulged himself sufficiently in this refreshment, and recomposed his features again with some care, the young gentleman stood for a moment irresolute, tapping his boot with his cane, and then, as if his mind were made up, set off at a brisk pace in the direction of Notre Dame. As he stepped out it did not need his showy uniform, which was that of the famous corps of Mousquetaires, his jingling spurs, or his long rapier, of a heavier make than the dress-sword then worn by every gentleman, to show him for a soldier. You saw it in his measured stride, in every movement of a lithe and graceful yet strong and well-knit figure, in the gay recklessness of his manner, and especially in the ardent and somewhat imperious glance of his dark gray eye. A trace of superciliousness and vanity on his bold, handsome face you would have pardoned to his years and comeliness. Women smiled kindly on the gay young mousquetaire as he passed them, and were not ill-pleased at the kisses he flung them in promiscuous homage from the tips of his gloved fingers. Male glances not so kind, instinct, indeed, with smouldering scorn and hatred, were shot at him covertly too—glances such as a half-century later gloated openly with savage ferocity over the death-struggles of other hapless young mousquetaires dying hopelessly and gallantly, sword in hand, for a king who knew how to make locks but not laws, and a queen who could win all hearts but those of her people.

But right little recked our young mousquetaire of glances, hostile or kindly, from those he looked upon but as a rabble of the gutter, to be kicked or beaten like other animals out of his lordly path. The young summer in his blood all unconscious of that slumbering storm, he strode along, dispensing musk and kisses, and gaily humming a madrigal of Benserade, to the Rue des Poulies, and along that street, picking his way daintily over the wretched pavement till he came in front of a certain bric-à-brac shop. There he paused, hesitated a moment, and, pulling off his plumed hat and putting on his most fascinating smile, bowed low to two persons standing in the doorway.

This simple act of courtesy had a singular effect on the two persons in question, a young man and a young woman. This effect was apparently the same on both: they first colored violently, then frowned, then turned pale. But to an observer in the attic window over the way it seemed that the internal emotions indicated by these facial changes were very unlike in each. The young man seemed—to this observer—to be moved by displeasure rising even to intense rage; the girl’s uppermost feeling seemed to be embarrassment, and displeasure, if any, only at being caused embarrassment. But the observer could not quite decide that she was displeased at all by this act of politeness, and he inclined rather to think that her blush was caused by pleasure at seeing the young mousquetaire, while her frown was directed at her companion for his inopportune presence.

“Yes, that is it,” said this acute analyst to himself: “the blush was for the mousquetaire, whom she is glad to see, the frown for M. De Trop, who is in the way, and the pallor for herself, whom she heartily 839wishes out of the way in the row she foresees coming.”

While this thoughtful philosopher of the attic was thus moralizing a curious incident took place. The girl, who held some roses in her hand, dropped one of them, no doubt from agitation. The mousquetaire sprang forward to seize it. As he stooped over the flower the young man of the doorway, with an angry exclamation, thrust him back with such good-will that he reeled into the roadway and came near falling. Recovering himself in an instant, he whipped out his sword and rushed upon the other, crying:

“Baseborn scullion! darest thou raise thy hand to a gentleman? Thy life shall pay it.”

This was not, perhaps, his exact language, but it is so much nicer than what he really did say that we will let it stand in despite of history. At all events the young man understood him very clearly to express an intention of skewering him upon the spot; so, with a natural reluctance to being skewered, he armed himself with an iron bar used for fastening the door of the bric-à-brac shop, and resolutely awaited the onset.

At sight of these warlike overtures the girl screamed and the neighbors came flocking to doors and windows in pleasurable anticipation. The philosopher in the attic appeared to await the issue with composure.

Suddenly she who was the lovely cause of strife between the heroes stepped forward.

“Forbear, gentlemen,” she cried. “For shame! Would you shed blood for a paltry flower? If ’tis but a rose you want, here is one for each of you.”

And with a charming mixture of shyness and coquetry-the coquetry of a pretty woman who feels herself to be the object of contention between brave men—she proffered to each of the champions a rose.

The mousquetaire sheathed his sword at once, seized his flower with rapture, pressed it to his lips and to his heart, and looked altogether so languishing and sheepish that the young girl had to bite her lips to control a smile. She could not so easily hide the laugh that sparkled in her dancing eyes and made them still more dazzling.

The young man of the doorway received his rose with reluctance, seemed half disposed to reject it, and more than half disposed to throw it away after taking it, and fell back with so sullen and sulky an air that the Helen of this Iliad could forbear no longer, but laughed outright and merrily.

At that electric stroke of happy ridicule the clouds passed and the air cleared; the storm was over. The neighbors withdrew discontentedly to their shops, while the mousquetaire, with another bow and smile, departed. But he did not kiss his finger-tips to this young girl, as he had to the others.

The philosopher of the attic surveyed these events with conflicting emotions.

“Humph!” said he, rather ruefully, “the roses I spent my last sou for, the price of my breakfast, in fact, to lay upon her window-sill this morning. The one in the gutter, I suppose, is for me; was it by accident or design she dropped it? I wonder which of them she likes best?”

Gentle reader—for in these days it is only a gentle reader will deign to cast an eye over a simple love-tale like this—go with us but a little 840way, and we will try to unravel the philosopher’s problem.

II.

Had you chanced, then, miss or madam, to be your great-great-grandmother—as, Heaven be praised! you did not—and had you happened to be in the neighborhood of the Rue des Poulies in the year of grace 1743, and had it occurred to you to ask for the richest man in the quarter, public opinion would have answered unhesitatingly, “Papa Lamouracq, who keeps the bric-à-brac shop.” And had you further inquired who was the finest fellow and the best match in the neighborhood, the vote would still have been nearly unanimous for Raoul Berthier, the well-to-do ironmonger of the Quai de la Ferraille. And had you once more sought to know who was the prettiest girl—well, here there might have been some dissent, for the other prettiest girls and their mammas would no doubt have cast a scattering vote or so; but, counting the blind beggars for whom her hand was ever open, and the babies she was always ready to romp with, not to speak of the shrewd old fathers of families, who saw her beauty, as shrewd old fathers will, in the light of her imagined expectations, a decided majority would still have been given for Pauline Lamouracq, the old brocanteur’s young and only daughter.

Now, however public opinion may have erred with regard to two of the persons named—and, indeed, Papa Lamouracq, whenever the matter was broached, would protest, with many oaths and shrugs and groans, that, so far from being the richest man in the parish, he was in reality the very poorest (but what bric-à-brac dealer was ever otherwise, especially if he be an Auvergnat, as in Paris he generally is when he is not a Jew?)—certainly it made no mistake with regard to Pauline. Pretty beyond a doubt she was, with her trim young figure and her dark brown hair and eyes, lit both with a flash of golden light, and her—but, no; let us not attempt the impossible task of describing the charm and freshness of girlish beauty at eighteen. Do you, miss, look in the glass, or do you, sir—if so be it that stray masculine eyes shall linger over these artless pages—think of her you love best, and let that be our Pauline. Only herself seemed to be unconscious of her great beauty; for, though her mirror must have whispered to her now and again the charming secret, as it will to other young maidens, she fled from that perfidious counsellor, lest she should have a grievous addition to the load of peccadilloes she was wont to carry weekly to the confessional of her good friend and adviser, the old curé of the Church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois.

Indeed, she had fewer incentives to vanity than many girls not half so pretty, inasmuch as she had fewer admirers. Not that there were not many who sighed for her in secret; but Raoul’s temper was known to be as quick as his hand was heavy, and they discreetly held aloof. Raoul and Pauline had been betrothed from a very early age, and the former was not one to brook any rivalry. From the cradle almost he had been wayward and headstrong. Years before, when little more than a child, he had run away to sea, and strange tales were whispered of his doings with Jean Bart, that famous privateer and scourge of perfidious Albion. 841Now that he had come back a fine, bronzed, athletic fellow of six or seven and thirty to take his place in his dead father’s business, and handle, the gossips said, a very pretty pot of money, he was more violent and self-willed and exacting than ever; and there were not wanting those who, seeing the look that came too often into his dark, handsome face, shook their heads and prophesied that all would not be sunshine in the married life of the pretty Pauline.

If she herself shared any of these misgivings she never showed it, but was as affectionate, and even obedient, to her intended husband as the most jealous swain could ask. On one point only did she go counter to his wishes, and that was in seeing a distant cousin, André Thiriot, who alone of all the young fellows in the neighborhood made her the object of an absorbing devotion that every one but herself laughed at. In truth, poor André was not fitted out by nature for the ideal lover. Lame from a fall in his childhood, small and insignificant in appearance (but for a high white forehead and a pair of large and brilliant eyes), and a beggarly huissier’s clerk to boot, he was a pretty fellow, forsooth, to aspire to the hand of the richest heiress in the quarter. So Papa Lamouracq thought, and, when his poor kinsman first hinted timidly at the idea nearest his heart, bade him begone with bitter rebuke and reviling. “He marry Pauline, indeed! Puny weakling! No man should have his girl who could not protect her with an arm as stout as his own. In these days,” said Papa Lamouracq, very truly, “who knows at what moment his women-kind may need protection from these vile marquises and mousquetaires that go about troubling the peace of honest folks?” And Papa Lamouracq, who had served in the wars, drew himself up to his full five feet nine—which in France, you know, is a colossal stature—squared his broad shoulders, and looked very fierce and resolute. It was, indeed, a time when beauty and innocence of the bourgeois class, where, indeed, very much that there was at Paris of beauty allied to innocence resided, needed stout hearts and strong arms to fence it. The gay courtiers of Louis XV. respected few laws, human or divine, and no woman not of the privileged classes was safe from their insults.

So poor André was sent to the right-about with a very large sized flea in his ear, and could only see his fair cousin thereafter by stealth. Raoul swore that if he ever caught him prowling about her he would break every bone in his body. For that threat, indeed, André cared little, for he had a brave spirit in his little body; but he loved his cousin too well to cause her needless annoyance, and he had perforce to content himself with the stolen interviews she could give him at such odd times as her father was away with Raoul at the cabaret, which, indeed, was only too often. Nor was Pauline loath to profit by these chances to see her cousin. That everybody repulsed and derided him was to her woman’s nature of course only an additional reason for liking him. Then, too, he had been her mother’s favorite, almost as a child to her on the death of his own parents, and, lastly, he talked very differently from the others about her. Pauline, thanks to the watchful care of her good friend and godfather, the curé of St. Germain, 842had had a better education than most girls of her class, and André was a genius and a poet—at least, they both thought so; which, for them, came to much the same thing. He rhymed about as well as the rest of the rhyming crew, in an age when in France and England there were many rhymers and few poets, and those few not always greatly cared for; when Voltaire passed sentence on Homer Shakspere; when Dorat’s perfumed nothings fluttered in every boudoir, while Gilbert starved in a garret. To the taste of one simple maiden André’s madrigals and sonnets and what-not were as good as the best, and she never tired of hearing them. Even when she could not see him she could still hear them; for our poet had a very pretty turn for music as well, and from his window opposite hers would sing her his chansons, set to his own music, with such ardor and perseverance as quite enchanted his pretty cousin, and won for the performer a singular degree of unpopularity among his neighbors.

So the lame bard remained Pauline’s only open admirer until one eventful day when there came spurring through the dull and sombre street, lighting it up like a flash of sunshine, a splendid vision of a mousquetaire. Pauline chanced to be standing in the doorway of her father’s shop, and, as he caught sight of that lovely picture set in the dark frame of the portal, the bold cavalier, riding to her side, straightway proceeded to woo her in the off-hand fashion of the court. But in the soft, half-wondering reproach of the brown eyes lifted for but a moment to his own there was a depth of purity and innocence that baffled this intrepid courtier more than any words; he stammered over his first sentence, hesitated, broke down, and—blushed. Yes, incredible as it may seem, in the middle of the eighteenth century, and in the very focus of civilization, a mousquetaire blushed. To be sure he was young. Perhaps it was a reflection from his glowing cheek that brought to Pauline’s pale one a rosier tint; perhaps it was simply wonder at this unprecedented phenomenon; Pauline, too, was young, and the culprit, it must be owned, was very handsome. At all events he could only gasp out a hasty apology before she withdrew and left him to ride away, over head and tingling ears in love.

Raoul heard of this encounter and roared—burst out into a furious passion of rage and jealousy that left Pauline in tears.

André saw the meeting from his eyrie in the attic and—sighed. With one handsome rival he might hope, he might even, with some aid from the muses, hold his own; but with two—? The poor bard took to reading Tibullus; he had no heart for madrigals when life itself was an elegy, and for a night or two the neighbors slept in peace.

III.

One morning a young man presented himself to Papa Lamouracq and asked to be taken as an apprentice to learn the bric-à-brac trade. Papa Lamouracq was a little shy of apprentices; but as he really needed help and the premium offered was large, he could not resist the temptation to his bargaining instinct, and the postulant was accepted.

The new-comer was active, intelligent, and above all good-looking; and these virtues soon won 843for him a fair place in Pauline’s esteem until she caught him making sheep’s eyes at her with extreme persistency and uncompromising sheepishness. Thereat she reproved him sharply, and, to punish him, set him to washing the dishes—a task he undertook with entire good-humor, but so much more zeal than skill that he broke more than he cleaned and speedily had to be relieved. Then he took to sighing like a bellows, and when his mistress laughed at him this audacious intruder made love to her outright, and of course got properly snubbed for his pains. But fancy Miss Pauline’s amazement when this astonishing apprentice, so far from being abashed by her chilling rebuke, went down upon his marrow-bones, and, revealing himself as the Chevalier d’Aubuisson, plumped her an offer of his heart and hand and a fine old château in Normandy.

The sight of this dashing mousquetaire in a shop-boy’s apron seemed so absurd that the young lady thus tenderly adjured felt more inclined to laugh than ever—indeed, she was a merry little maiden, more given to smiles than tears—but the evident sincerity of the young man’s emotion touched her.

“He has cut off that lovely moustache to be near me,” was her pensive reflection, as she gazed upon his eloquent, upturned face, from which that military embellishment was indeed missing. No doubt, too, she was secretly flattered and pleased; for it was not every day, I promise you, in the Paris of a century ago, that a shopman’s daughter had the chance of refusing to be the wife of a handsome young noble. And then what young girl’s heart could help going out a little to the romantic side of this madcap adventure?

But there was another aspect to the affair which made her grave at once.

“Pray rise, sir,” she said coldly; “this position is unbecoming to you and uncomfortable to me. ’Twas not well done, M. le Chevalier, to steal into my father’s household under false colors; and though I feel the honor you do me, I cannot listen to you further. I am already affianced. If you have any of the regard you profess for me, you will instantly quit this travesty and this house.”

This was reasonable advice, so our impetuous young mousquetaire rejected it at once. He would never leave her, he vowed with vehemence, till she had promised to be his.

This wild proposal plunged poor Pauline into great perplexity. To tell her father or her intended would, she foresaw, precipitate a terrible row and scandal with probable bloodshed; and perhaps it was not wholly tenderness for her relatives which checked her as she glanced furtively at her embarrassingly handsome wooer, revolving the problem of how most easily to get rid of him in an anxious mind. Nor could she go to her cousin; she blushed, she scarce knew why, as she thought of it. So, as usual in all the little difficulties of her life, she betook herself to her friend the curé, who soon found a key to the riddle.

The next day there rode up to the door of Papa Lamouracq’s bric-à-brac shop an orderly with a letter for M. le Chevalier d’Aubuisson, and by noon his majesty’s corps of mousquetaires had received a reluctant and rather mutinous reinforcement of one. And—O bitter 844and humiliating thought!—the moustache had been sacrificed in vain.

IV.

So matters stood in the Rue des Poulies at the time of that remarkable meeting which opens this eventful history, and apropos of which an observer in the attic asked himself, as you may remember, “Which does she like best?” Raoul’s rage upon this knew no bounds; and Papa Lamouracq, when he came to hear of it, was little better. They both insisted that the wedding-day should be fixed at once, and for no distant date, and poor Pauline was fain to consent. Yet, as the fatal day drew near, she shrank from it more and more. School herself as she would into obedience to her father’s will and love for her future husband, the coming marriage filled her with an invincible repugnance. Was it because she had given her heart to another, or only because Raoul’s brutality had alienated her esteem? I do not know; she did not know herself: it was a question she never dared ask her heart.

In the midst of this moral conflict by which she was so cruelly torn her mind went back often and longingly to the serenity and calm of the convent where she had passed so many of her early years, and to the peaceful, happy faces of the nuns. She yearned with an inexpressible yearning to be among them once more; she had even wild, half-formed thoughts of flying from her wretchedness and trouble and taking refuge in that quiet haven.

Naturally, therefore, when André, to whom she had dropped an intimation of her thought, urged her strongly to act upon it, she turned and rent him.

“How dare you say such things to me!” she cried with more passion than he had ever seen her show. “How dare you advise me to disobey my father! You know very well my first duty is to him. He wishes me to marry Raoul, and—and I wish it. I am not miserable. I love Raoul dearly, and we shall be very hap—hap—happy.”

And to prove the joyful nature of her anticipations she burst forthwith into tears.

The poor poet stood aghast; he was not prepared for this display of feminine consistency. Genius as he was, he had yet to learn that to set a woman against a doubtful project she is coquetting with in her mind, the surest way is to urge her to it. Dearly as he loved his cousin and wished to make her his wife, he loved her happiness more, and would joyfully have seen her take the veil, marry the mousquetaire even, whom he suspected her of favoring, anything to escape this marriage, in what he foresaw for her only wretchedness, if not death. Raoul in his drunken furies, he knew, would stop at nothing, and even as a lover he had threatened her life.

“But,” he stammered, conscience-stricken, “I thought you said you wished to be in the convent.”

“You know I never said anything of the kind,” sobbed the indignant fair. “I forbid you ever to say such things to me again. You are very unkind to tease me so, and it is only your mis—miserable jealousy.”

The poet winced under this poisoned shaft, but was too generous to retaliate. His cousin had the right of suffering to be unjust.

Nevertheless, he could not forego 845another effort to rescue her, as he called it. It wanted but a day or two of the wedding when he next got a chance to see her, for she was now watched and guarded almost like a prisoner. Drawing a little packet from his pocket, he said with a sad smile:

“Pauline, here is my wedding gift. It is the most precious, indeed, the only precious, thing I have.”

Pauline opened the packet. It held only a withered rose. She looked in perplexity from the gift to the giver.

“Do you know what rose it is, Pauline? ’Tis the one that was trampled in the mire the day the mousquetaire and Raoul fought.”

“Dear André!” said Pauline, pressing his hand. She was greatly touched by his unobtrusive devotion.

“I have often wondered,” she went on musingly, “where those roses came from.” (You see, miss, a posy was more of an event in this simple life than in yours, bouqueted and basketed as it is.) “I have sometimes thought, do you know, it was—” Pauline stopped suddenly and blushed.

“Raoul, of course,” said André quietly.

“No,” said Pauline briefly, and blushed again.

“Not the mousquetaire?” said André in affected amazement.

“Yes, yes,” said Pauline, still very rosy—“that horrid mousquetaire. I’m sure,” she added with a toss of her pretty head, “he had impudence enough for anything.”

This is the way, messieurs, that the ungrateful fair for whom we run all risks characterize our devotion.

“No,” said André gently, “it was not the mousquetaire.”

The girl looked up quickly, a sudden light in her eyes.

“Dear André!” she said again, “you are very good to me.”

They were silent awhile, and then the poet, taking the girl’s hand, said earnestly:

“Listen to me, Pauline. There is a condition to my gift. It is that if at the last moment you should change your mind in regard to—to—” he hesitated—“to what we once spoke of, you will send me back this rose,^[167] and I will find a way to save you.”

Pauline made no answer; but she no longer scolded, and André was satisfied that she had agreed. We shall see if he was right.

V.

On the night before Pauline’s wedding-day a merry and noisy company of mousquetaires were gathered in the Café Aux Fers Croisés. Some were playing billiards, others baccarat; all were drinking, and nearly all were singing and shouting at the top of their lungs. Only our old friend, the Chevalier d’Aubuisson, sat apart by himself, very woebegone and silent.

A comrade, drawing near, slapped him on the shoulder and said boisterously:

“Come, come, my friend, cheer up. Don’t mope your life away because your light o’ love is false.”

This delicate counsel the mousquetaires greeted with vociferous applause.

846D’Aubuisson sprang to his feet with flashing eyes.

“Vicomte de Brissac,” he cried, “hold! The first who breathes a word against that angel dies. I swear it, by this sword!”

The mousquetaires were silent; not that they respected his evident emotion—they respected little enough, not even themselves—but they did respect his sword.

“Why, man!” said De Brissac at length, “you don’t mean to say you are in earnest—that you would marry the girl?”

“To-morrow, if she would have me. God knows how willingly; and to-morrow I lose her for ever.”

With a groan the chevalier sank back into his seat and buried his face in his hands.

“Tut, tut, man!” said De Brissac, who was naturally kind-hearted. “If you love her so, why give her up tamely? She must like you better than this shop-keeper.” Our mousquetaires had a brave contempt for all men who earned their living honestly. “Why not make a bold push for it and carry her off from under his nose? We’ll all stand by you”—“That will we,” in chorus from the rest—“and, take my word for it, the bird will thank you for her rescue from the fowler.”

D’Aubuisson looked up quickly, a gleam of hope in his face. But his brow soon grew dark; he knew Pauline too well to believe that she would sanction or forgive such an act of violence, however much she loved him. And he was more than half persuaded she did love him, in spite of her rejection, conceited young mousquetaire that he was; he was fully persuaded she did not love Raoul, both from his own observation and the statements of Papa Lamouracq’s old housekeeper, Angélique, whom he had won to his interests. If he could but bring her to consent! It was a forlorn hope, but he would make a last appeal.

He wrote a fervent letter to Pauline, proposing, if she agreed, to place her in charge of his aunt, the abbess of the Convent of Pont-aux-Dames, where she would be in safety until he could marry her. Both these lovers, you see, had the same thought, but with very different motives. This letter he despatched to his friend the housekeeper, promising her a royal reward if she got him an answer.

In an hour’s time the answer came: it was only a withered rose.

D’Aubuisson eyed it in blank amazement. Was it a cruel sneer, a mistake, or what?

“Bah!” cried De Brissac after a few moments’ study of the problem. “Love has made you dull, comrade, as it does most men. Don’t you see? Where is that weed I have seen you kissing a hundred times so insanely? This is the mate to it, and the message can have but one meaning: she is yours.”

Angélique confirmed this view, which our mousquetaire was only too willing to accept; so with much clinking of glasses and vowing of vows the rescuing party was made up.

All night long the poet kept lonely vigil in his attic, waiting and longing, and hoping against hope, for the rose which never came. Had it come he would have been puzzled to know what steps to take for Pauline’s deliverance; but somehow he felt he would compass it, if he had to ask the aid of his rival the mousquetaire, and though the price were his cousin’s hand. But the long hours dragged wearily on and 847no word came. The dawn found him still keeping his weary watch, no longer hoping, but haggard indeed and the picture of despair—a most dismal philosopher, who in all his philosophy could find no comfort.

V.

It was a very gay wedding party that gathered next day at the Mill of Javelle, then a famous resort for the Parisian merrymakers, to do honor to the nuptials of Raoul Berthier and the lovely Pauline, less lovely now, alas! for care and sorrow had worn her almost to a shadow of her former self. With the wedding guests mingled freely an unusual number of masks; but their presence excited little remark and no objection, for it was one of the familiar privileges of the time. And the strangers, whoever they were, made themselves so agreeable to the feminine part of the company that by these, at least, they were voted a welcome addition to the pleasures of the day.^[168]

It had been arranged that the wedding ceremony should be performed by the curé of St. Germain l’Auxerrois in a little chapel hard by at ten o’clock, and that the wedding breakfast should follow. But ten o’clock passed, and eleven, and still there was no sign of the good priest. Noon was drawing near when Papa Lamouracq swore roundly that they would wait no longer, but sit down to the feast at once, let the marriage take place when it might—a decision hailed with acclamation by his guests. Perhaps, too, a glance at Raoul’s condition—he had been drinking deeply all the morning and through the previous night—may have suggested the wisdom of postponing the ceremony.

At this moment one of the masks drew near Pauline, who stood a little apart, pale and sorrowful, and whispered hurriedly in her ear:

“Dearest, come; it is the time. A post-chaise waits for us in yonder clump. In an hour’s time we shall have you safe behind the convent walls.”

Pauline shrank from him in mingled astonishment and terror. Then he showed her a withered rose; she knew it at once for the same she had sent the night before to André upon receiving D’Aubuisson’s letter. This she had torn to pieces in a transport of indignation and bade Angélique carry the pieces back to the writer. But the very suggestion so terrified her in her nervous state with the idea of an attempted abduction such as was only too common in that lawless time, that her scruples yielded at last, and she resolved to take André’s advice and seek refuge in a convent. With this view she commissioned the housekeeper to carry to her cousin the signal rose. That crafty old person, however, shrewdly surmising that the return of his own torn letter would win her scant esteem or guerdon from her employer, took it upon herself to give him the rose instead—a message on which at need she could put her own construction.

At sight of the flower Pauline hesitated. Surely this could not be her cousin; the figure seemed much too tall, yet, if not, how came he by the signal? In her confusion and incertitude she suffered herself to be half-passively drawn by the unknown in the direction of the thicket he spoke of. As she did so the 848other masks drew together about them—a movement unnoticed by the rest of the company, whose thoughts and eyes were all intent upon the loaded and steaming tables, to which they were on the point of sitting down under the trees.

Suddenly a wild scream startled them. It was from Pauline, who had just caught sight of André’s pale, reproachful face gazing at her fixedly from the outskirts of the crowd. At her scream the wedding guests, headed by Papa Lamouracq, came hurrying towards the bride with various cries of anger, astonishment, and menace. The situation bade fair to be embarrassing.

But the chevalier was a man of promptness and decision, by no means one to draw back from an undertaking once begun. Besides, to him Pauline was only hysterical; she must be saved in spite of herself. Further disguise was useless; force only would now prevail. So catching the fainting girl in his arms as if she were an infant, and shouting, A moi, mousquetaires! he pressed on to the carriage.

But he was not to reach it unopposed, however. The word mousquetaires made plain the whole design to the dullest-witted in the assembly: the fame of those audacious scamps for similar exploits was wide-spread. Among the wedding company was more than one old privateering comrade of Raoul’s who had swung cutlass and boarding-hatchet by his side; and it so chanced that two other wedding parties had brought to the mill that same day some scores of sturdy blacksmiths and fishermen and stout butchers from the Halles. Armed with stools and benches, with sticks and stones, they flung themselves furiously upon the mousquetaires, some fifty or sixty in number. The latter, casting off mask and domino, and forming a circle about D’Aubuisson and the unconscious Pauline, defended themselves with vigor.

The fight was long and uncertain, and many were hurt on both sides. But disciplined valor won the day as usual over brute strength, and in spite of every effort of their antagonists the mousquetaires slowly but surely made their way towards the fatal thicket. Papa Lamouracq, himself wounded more than once, and disabled, could only gnash his teeth and howl impotent curses at the foe; the bridegroom, at his first step towards the scene of conflict, had staggered and fallen, and was lying on the grass in a drunken stupor; the little poet, bleeding already from a ghastly wound in the forehead, had to be forcibly held back from flinging himself like another Winkelried upon the bristling blades of the mousquetaires. All seemed lost.

But despair, too, has its inspirations. The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, seeking everywhere for a weapon to annihilate his enemies, fell upon one of the steaming tureens of soup just served for the wedding feast. Instantly he caught it up and hurled it, contents and all, full at the heads of the victorious mousquetaires. Two went down at once before the shock; half a score were scalded by the boiling liquor; double that number—O much more direful and appalling tragedy!—had their splendid uniforms stained by good Mère Leroux’s most savory potage.

Shrewdly did Cæsar bid his veterans strike only at the faces of Pompey’s dandy cavaliers. Thus does history repeat itself. Death and torture our mousquetaires 849would have faced unflinchingly, and charged a battery as gaily as they would have danced a minuet; but their clothes were dear to them. For most of them they were their only clothes, and what wonder if at the onslaught of this novel and terrific weapon they wavered? So might the bravest knight who first faced the terrors of gunpowder have hesitated without shame to his courage. André’s example was infectious. From all sides was rained upon the hapless mousquetaires a shower of soups, ragouts and entremets, sauces, sausages and salads, omelettes aux fines herbes and omelettes sucrées, until they fairly broke and fled, dripping, not blood, but gravy at every pore, and dragging with them by main force their frantic leader, who wished not to survive the loss of his Pauline.

VI.

Need the sequel be told? Of course the valiant poet was rewarded with the hand of her he had loved so faithfully and rescued so oddly. Papa Lamouracq was loyal to his vow that only to the man who could protect his daughter should she be given, and it was Raoul’s turn to be sent off in disgrace. He sold out his business, disappeared from the Quai de la Ferraille, and betook himself to his old trade of privateering, or, many folks said, something worse. As for André, he became a famous poet, was presented at court, and duly enrolled among the glorious fellowship of wits—the great M. Voltaire deigned to call him confrère, much to Pauline’s indignation, for that great man’s notions were by no means to her taste—and his poems may no doubt still be found by those who look for them in the Bibliothèque Impériale.

What were they, do you ask? Truly I have never heard, but he was a most famous poet.

What was better, he was a most happy husband, and Pauline never regretted the chance which made her his wife instead of Raoul’s. She owned she had always liked him the best, which I dare say was true, though I suspect that in her secret heart she would have liked a more romantic fashion of being won, and was not over and above pleased when André’s friends, in allusion to his valor, called him Marshal Terrine or M. De Bouillon. But she was very happy, especially when, after her father’s death, they found themselves rich enough to fulfil that dream of every good Parisian, a neat little country house with a lovely garden in the suburbs.

And the poor mousquetaire? Ah! miss, you are right. Could we but have had him for our hero, which was indeed the author’s intention at the start, as you may see by looking back to the earlier pages of this veracious history! But fate, alas! is not to be gainsaid, and on the whole, perhaps, Pauline was better off with her poet. The chevalier could not face the ridicule poured upon him for his share in the Battle of the Soup-Kettle, as the wits called it. He got himself exchanged into a regiment at the front, and fell fighting gallantly in the decisive charge which broke the English column at Fontenoy.

I forgot to mention that Pauline’s favorite pastime in her country life was cultivating roses, with which her garden in the season fairly glowed; and on each anniversary of her wedding-day it was her custom to put by her husband’s 850plate at breakfast a little posy containing exactly three of the flowers in question, which he never failed to receive with an air of the utmost surprise as to where they could possibly come from.

THE ENGLISH PRESS AND THE PAN-ANGLICAN SYNOD.

On the 2d of July a certain, or rather uncertain, number of English, Irish, Scotch, Canadian, and American gentlemen met together in the long-desecrated chapel of Lambeth Palace; and on the 27th of the same month the same gentlemen, after listening to a discourse in St. Paul’s Cathedral from one of their number, the “Bishop of Pennsylvania,” bade each other farewell. During the twenty-five days that had intervened between these two dates the gentlemen in question had talked a great deal to and at each other, sometimes in public and sometimes with closed doors. A general sense of confusion concerning this assemblage seemed to pervade that portion of the public mind of London which paid any attention to it. The London newspapers, which must notice everything, from the arrest of a pickpocket to the reconstruction of an empire, could not agree upon the title to be given it. In the Morning Post it was spoken of as “The Lambeth Conference”; the Spectator called it “The Gathering of the Bishops”; the Times on one day entitled it “The Pan-Anglican Synod,” on another it spoke of it as “Episcopal Visitors”; the Pall Mall Gazette and the Saturday Review agreed upon “The Bishops at Lambeth” as a sufficiently safe and non-committal title; but the former, on one day, went so far as to venture to speak of the assemblage as “The Pan-Anglican Conference.” Nor did the reporters of the journals arrive at a consensus of opinion concerning the number of these gentlemen; one authority reporting them as numbering “something like eighty-five prelates,” while another placed the assemblage at “about one hundred,” and a third, with greater precision, spoke of “about one hundred bishops and four archbishops.” A still more notable diversity of opinion prevailed as to the purpose for which these gentlemen had come together—some of the writers in the journals insisting that the affair was a mere social gathering; others that it was a species of debating society composed exclusively of Anglican bishops; others that it was a conclave to devise combined action “to put down the Ritualists”; others that its purpose was to “sell out” to the pope, if peradventure he would buy; others that it covered a scheme for the “corporate unity” of the Protestant Episcopal Churches in Great Britain, Ireland, the colonies, and America, with the Archbishop of Canterbury as patriarch. The journals which care most for the respectability and perpetuation of the Anglican body besought the gentlemen to content themselves with talking, taking tea, and smoking in Mrs. Tait’s back garden, and not to attempt to do anything else. “We recommend the bishops,” said 851the Spectator, “not to attempt a pastoral, as they did last time; not to try their hands on points of creed; not to suppose that for any purpose of defining religious belief they will be strengthened by this concourse, if not rather weakened.” They might, perhaps, discuss “what concession could be made to pagan and heathen converts brought up under a very different morality from the Christian”—as, for instance, we suppose, whether a Turkish convert might not be permitted to indulge in his peculiar ideas regarding marriage, and whether a converted Thug should not be allowed to strangle a victim occasionally. Or they might even venture to discuss “the practicability or impracticability of church discipline”—that is, whether it be “practicable” or “impracticable” for a clergyman to refuse to marry a divorced person or to exclude an unrepentant murderer from the communion-table; or for a bishop to prevent one of his clergy from turning the communion service into a Methodist love-feast, or another from making it a close imitation of the holy sacrifice of the Mass. They might “discuss” these things, but they must not act upon them, and they must above all refrain from “discussing creeds.” “We strongly recommend the Pan-Anglican Synod,” exclaimed the Spectator, “to renounce entirely the superstition which attaches to such assemblages of bishops a sort of divine skill in discriminating truth from falsehood. Indeed, we believe them to be under very special incapacities for any such discrimination.” Honest and true advice, but hard for the so-called bishops to bear, as coming from a journal warmly attached to Anglicanism and edited by two prominent and zealous members of that church. No discussion of creeds! no discrimination of truth from falsehood! Why, here is the Anglican body throughout the English-speaking peoples, with a clergy no two of whom can agree upon the most vital dogmas of the Christian faith; who are disputing with each other and befogging the minds of their people with their discordant “views” upon the subject of baptismal regeneration; upon the sanctity and indissolubility of the marriage relation; upon the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. If these were true bishops, if their church were really a church and anything but a state-born and worldly association, these bishops would not have separated without not only “discussing” but defining the faith and providing for its preservation and enforcement.

They took the Spectator’s advice. They took it all the more readily, perhaps, because the Times pointed out to them that “these highly respectable gentlemen from the antipodes and the tropics, from the Transvaal and the Falls of Niagara,” must make up their minds that to eat “a dinner at the Mansion House” was the most important work they would have to perform, and that in “the social assemblages” that would follow they would “find more benefit than from their public conferences.” The Times frowned upon the suggestion that the Primate of All England countenances, even tacitly, the suggestion that he should be recognized as the metropolitan of the Anglican Church; the Saturday Review ridiculed the opinion that “the reliance of the independent communities upon England might be regulated 852and strengthened by declaring that the Archbishop of Canterbury was a patriarch, and Lord Penzance, we suppose, family lawyer all round,” and went to the extent of comparing the church to an “Odd-fellows’ society.” In the face of chaff like this the gentlemen from the antipodes and Niagara Falls, as well as those from Lincolnshire and Edinburgh, turned a deaf ear to the appeals alike of Ritualistic working-men and Low-Church green-grocers, and wisely contented themselves with eating the lord mayor’s dinner, going to sober evening parties, preaching sermons in London churches, and devoting a few hours each week to the discussion, in church-congress fashion, of such thrilling and vitally important themes as “Voluntary Boards of Arbitration,” or “the position of Anglican chaplains on the Continent of Europe and elsewhere.” To cap the climax, during the session of the conference the first anniversary of “the Reformed Episcopal Church of England” was held in Newman Hall’s church in London. The Reformed Episcopal Church of England, it may not be generally known, was imported into England from the United States, and had its birth by the secession of Bishop Cummings, Mr. Cheney of Chicago, and some others from the Protestant Episcopal Church. The Reformed Episcopal Church of England has a bishop—one Mr. Gregg—and at this anniversary meeting Bishop Gregg said:

“The Church of England might be likened to a ship. When he joined it he thought he was going straight to a Protestant port, but he afterwards found that the ship had turned its head, had altered its course, and was now bound straight for Rome. For this reason, as he did not want to go to Rome, he thought it best to come out of it. Some people had asked, ‘Why not remain in it and endeavor to alter its course? Why not try to reform it?’ His answer was that others had tried to do it and had failed, and therefore he had come to his present conclusion. After denouncing the evils of sacerdotalism Dr. Gregg said that he considered the present Prayer-book was the cause of many of the existing evils. The Reformed Episcopal Church had therefore entirely revised it, freed it from all sacerdotalism, had thoroughly uprooted all its dangerous dogmas, and the revised edition now in press would shortly be issued.”

The bishops at Lambeth were so fearful of disobeying the injunctions of the Spectator not to “discuss creeds,” or to attempt to “discriminate between truth and error,” that they did not even venture to rebuke Bishop Gregg or to take any steps against this schism. Indeed, how can they be sure that he is not right and that they are not wrong?

The first Pan-Anglican Synod, convoked eleven years ago, the London Times says, “excited some curiosity, mingled with more ridicule and remonstrances.” But it discharged its “apparent functions” to the satisfaction of all concerned. That is—

“It afforded to a great many hard-working gentlemen the opportunity of taking a holiday under the guise of an episcopal progress. A certain number among them it enabled to render an account in person to their constituents in England of the value they had received for the funds entrusted to their hands, and to beg for more. Over and above these material objects, the synod professed its aim to preserve Anglican churchmen throughout the world in theological harmony. This, too, it accomplished, at least negatively. English churchmen were able to testify that Protestant bishops from the east and from the west resembled each other very closely in demeanor and in their forms of thought. They even had, surmounting the obstacles of their local accent, 853the very tone of voice which no other body of clergy throughout the civilized world can boast, and which gives Church-of-England ministers a virtual monopoly of the clerical sore throat. Our visitors, whose episcopal residences and cathedrals are scattered over the globe, carried home, we believe, an equally good report of church conservatism in the mother-country.”

But the subtle mind of the late Bishop of Winchester, who was the reputed author of this episcopal picnic, had deeper views at bottom. He intended the first Pan-Anglican Synod as an answer to the sneer that the Church of England is a local accident, without any principle of spiritual authority, growth, or development. The synod was held, but the Bishop of Winchester was disappointed: the bishops would do nothing; they would not even order Bishop Colenso to the stake; and, “as clergymen, what they manifested above all else was that the Anglican Church in England and the Anglican Church out of England resemble each other almost to identity. The special peculiarities of the Church of England come into even more prominence abroad than at home. We are more impressed with the spirit of the state church carved out by King Henry VIII. when we meet with its foreign professors than we are in the country of its birth.” How biting is this sarcasm, and how deeply it must cut into the heart of the Anglican or the American Episcopalian who stills fancies that the mind of England is true to Anglicanism!

The Lambeth Conference which has lately ended was as barren of results as was its predecessor. On the day before its first meeting a number of the American and colonial bishops went down to Canterbury, where Dr. Tait, perhaps as an undress rehearsal of his anticipated elevation to the post of Protestant Pope, had “the chair of St. Augustine” brought forth, enthroned himself in it, and delivered a discourse. The audacity of this performance was extreme; perhaps the thoughts which it must have suggested to the spectators will yield their proper fruit. In face of the disjecta membra of a creed before him Dr. Tait had the extreme rashness, not to use a harsher term, to say in this discourse that he and his hearers “had advantages which the great St. Augustine had not,” for “they stood nearer to the pure, primitive Christianity of the apostles than St. Augustine stood, ...” and that St. Augustine’s faith, which is that of the whole Catholic Church to-day, was “a sort of semi-pagan Christianity.” St. Augustine preached in England in the sixth century, Dr. Tait talks in the nineteenth; which is “nearer,” chronologically, “pure, primitive Christianity,” and which is nearer, doctrinally, the faith that St. Augustine received from Rome or that which Dr. Tait has received from Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth?

On the next day, July 2, the conference opened at Lambeth Palace. There were “something like eighty-five prelates present,” of whom forty-three were from the colonies and the United States. It seems that there are ten bishops unattached, living in and around London, who had expected to be invited and who were disgusted at being left out; but it is explained that “the primate felt that the line must be drawn somewhere, and these prelates had no jurisdiction, even of a delegated character,” so he drew it at them. Before entering the chapel to receive holy communion 854the bishops adopted the following declaration:

“We, bishops of Christ’s Holy Catholic Church, in visible communion with the churches of England and Ireland, professing the faith delivered to us in Holy Scripture, maintained by the primitive church and by the fathers of the blessed Reformation, now assembled by the good providence of God at the archiepiscopal palace of Lambeth, under the presidency of the Primate of All England, desire, first, to give hearty thanks to Almighty God for having thus brought us together for common counsel and united worship; secondly, we desire to express the deep sorrow with which we view the divided condition of the flock of Christ throughout the world, ardently longing for the fulfilment of the prayer of our Lord, ‘That all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they may also be one in us, that the world might believe that thou hast sent me’; and, lastly, we do here solemnly record our conviction that unity will be more effectually promoted by maintaining the faith in its purity and integrity—as taught in the Holy Scriptures, held by the primitive church, summed up in the creeds, and affirmed by the undisputed general councils—and by drawing each of us closer to our common Lord by giving ourselves to much prayer and intercession, by the cultivation of a spirit of charity and a love of the Lord’s appearing.”

Is it not extraordinary that men of intelligence will persist in befogging themselves with phrases about “the deep sorrow” with which they view the divided condition of the flock of Christ throughout the world, and their longing for the fulfilment of the prayer of our Lord for the unity of his people? The flock of Christ is not divided; it has never been divided, and can never be divided for the reason that he not only prayed for its unity but willed its unity, and provided infallible means for the preservation of its unity.

The communion service over, Dr. Thomson, the Archbishop of York, pronounced a somewhat remarkable discourse, in which Catholic truth, Protestant error, and fanciful theory were strangely mixed, from the words of St. Paul, “But when Peter was come to Antioch I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.” He exposed the fallacy of the theory that the great apostle of the gentiles and the first Supreme Pontiff were in antagonism to each other, and he did this ably; but he ended his sermon with the following absurd passage:

“More than one writer has been pleased to point out that in the first century there were three periods, in which three apostles—Peter, Paul, and John—predominated in succession; and they think they can trace the same succession in the larger field of church history, so that the Petrine period ends at the Reformation, and the Pauline succeeds it, whilst the time of St. John is supposed to be the beginning. There is something fanciful in this arrangement. Yet pardon the fancy for the truth that underlies it. And when Peter falters, impulsive, and is inconsistent with himself, and Paul withstands him to the face, let the third apostle enter on the scene and remind us that we can afford to use the largest charity whilst we hold still the firmest trust. His contribution to the eternal diapason of the church’s faith and love shall be this: ‘Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him and he in God.... And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also’ (1 John iv. 15, 21).”

It will not do to set up St. Paul as the John the Baptist of Luther and Henry VIII.’s Reformation; nor will it do to assume that Peter, whose province it is to confirm the faith of his brethren, “falters and is inconsistent with himself,” or that the church has waited until now to understand the words of St. John.

But here the curtain falls upon 855the public proceedings of the conference. They retired from the profane sight of men, and, shut up in company with “four reporters pledged to secrecy,” and who duly gave to the journals every day accounts of all that happened, they spent a few hours of each day in discussing “not creeds,” but “modern forms of infidelity”; “the best mode of maintaining unity among the various churches of the Anglican communion”; “Voluntary Boards of Arbitration for churches to which such an arrangement may be applicable”; “the relation to each other of missionary bishops and of missionaries in various branches of the Anglican community acting in the same country”; and “the position of Anglican chaplains and chaplaincies on the Continent of Europe and elsewhere.” Nothing could be less interesting than much of this; and the prelates were no doubt glad when all was over, and when they closed their meetings by a sermon from the Bishop of Pennsylvania in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

As is plain from the comments already given by the leading organs of English opinion, the second Pan-Anglican Synod attracted even less attention and more general contempt than the first. When men come to ask themselves what has been accomplished by the twenty-five days’ session besides tea and talk, what is the only answer? It is this: the synod ended, as it began, in nothing.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Ethics, or Moral Philosophy. By Walter H. Hill, S.J., Professor of Philosophy in the St. Louis University, author of Logic and Ontology, or General Metaphysics. Baltimore: Murphy & Co.; London: Washbourne. 1878.

We rejoice to learn that Father Hill’s first volume of the course of philosophy has met with great success. We have been long desiring to see the second part in regular order, namely, the Special Metaphysics. This is, undoubtedly, the most difficult part to treat in a satisfactory manner, as well as the one most controverted among Catholic writers, particularly as regards cosmology. Precisely on this account we were especially curious to hear Father Hill’s exposition of the debated questions, and perhaps this is also the reason why he has postponed this part of his work, and published first his Ethics. Ethics is equally important, and even more generally necessary and useful. We are, therefore, glad to welcome the Ethics of Father Hill, hoping that he may hasten, as much as his heavy labors in the work of teaching and in that of the sacred ministry will permit, the completion of his Metaphysics.

This volume is, like the first one, an English text-book of the same grade and quality with our standard Latin text-books in philosophy. It is suited for the educated reader and for the higher classes in college. Both volumes are above the capacity of pupils of a lesser degree of intellectual development and instruction. If it is possible to bring the study of philosophy down to the level of this class of pupils without reducing the science to a merely nominal and superficial condition, the text-book fitted for this purpose still remains a desideratum. For the general reader and the pupil who is able to understand it this manual of ethics will prove of great service. It has always been the rule and practice of the illustrious Society of Jesus to follow in instruction the doctrine of St. Thomas, as understood by the great body of Catholic 856theologians and philosophers, in all those particulars in which such a common understanding exists. In ethics, happily, there does exist such a common and generally accepted doctrine in regard to all chief and important topics, and there is consequently a great degree of unity and harmony in the teaching imparted by Catholic professors to their pupils. Without doubt it is the safest and most practical method to make the text-books of theology and philosophy, and the lectures of the class-room, conform to this common doctrine. Deeper and more original and free discussions of difficult and undecided or imperfectly-elucidated questions belong to another class of works.

Father Hill’s text-book may be taken as a safe and sound exponent of the system of ethics contained in our approved Latin manuals and taught in our seminaries and colleges. In substance its doctrine is scholastic, the doctrine of Aristotle, St. Thomas, Suarez, Bellarmine, Liberatore, and the generality of similar authors of approved reputation. The great number of original texts, with translations, which are interwoven with the author’s own exposition, gives the ordinary reader a notable advantage, by making him acquainted with the great writers on ethics, and furnishing a guarantee of the fidelity with which their ideas are presented by the author.

A minute criticism of the work before us in its minor details would occupy too much space for a mere notice. We are obliged, therefore, to content ourselves with a general expression of our favorable opinion of the manual as a whole, and of the treatment given to the principal topics in its several parts, and the briefest possible notation of particular points of remark. The first chapter, on the Ultimate End of Man, presents sufficiently for a treatise of such limited compass the twofold relation of humanity by nature and by grace to God as the Final Cause. One statement (p. 21), that “it is not simply impossible for God to make a creature so perfect that intuitive vision of the divine essence would be connatural to it,” we cannot concur in, and it is contrary to the common opinion that grace elevates its subject “super omnem naturam creatam atque creabilem,” so admirably defended by Father Mazzella in his De Deo Creante. We think, also, that the author confuses the abstractive with the discursive process in the same context, and refer to Liberatore’s exposition of the nature of angelic knowledge and the similar knowledge proper to the state of separated spirits, in his work Deli Uomo, for our reasons of dissent from the exposition of Father Hill. The qualification of “unnatural,” used in respect to a desire of the soul to see God intuitively, on page 23, seems to us objectionable, on account of the use of a term at least ambiguous, and liable to be taken as signifying a positive opposition between nature and a final term which transcends its specific active force. The remainder of the whole division of General Ethics, comprising the following chapters: ii., Action of Man as a Rational Being; iii., Principles of Moral Goodness; iv., The Passions; v., The Virtues; vi., Law; vii., Civil Law; viii., Conscience, is in our opinion admirable, and we find nothing to criticise. We are particularly pleased to see that the author refutes a common fallacy that sin is an infinite evil, meriting an infinite punishment. It is most important at this time, when the doctrine of endless punishment is so generally and violently assailed, that the exaggerations and fallacious arguments which cling around it should be cleared away, and only that which is the real doctrine of revelation be presented, sustained by rational arguments which are solid, which has been done by Liberatore, and also by Father Hill in his section of this subject.

In the second part, on Special Ethics, four chapters are included: i., Rights and Duties; ii., Special Duties; iii., Man as a Social Being; iv., Civil Society. We are glad to see that Father Hill distinctly asserts the rights of rational creatures before God, a most important point against Calvinistic, Jansenistic, and rigoristic exaggerations of the doctrine of God—absolute dominion and divine sovereignty, which make theology odious and drive many minds toward atheism in their intellectual despair. The question of veracity, lying, and mental reservation, which Grotius said made him sweat, is too briefly treated for a satisfactory enucleation of its difficulties, especially as the author departs from the common opinion of Catholic moralists. We are rather disposed to favor his view, which has strong reasons in its support, though not prepared to express 857an opinion that it is altogether complete and sufficient.

In treating the great question of civil society, with the subordinate question of the origin and legitimacy of government, etc., the author has shown great judgment and discrimination. He adheres to the theory of Suarez, Bellarmine, and the great body of the ablest Catholic authors, respecting political society. Ultra-monarchical and ultra-democratic theories are equally indefensible, and both are mischievous. We trust that loyal citizens of our republic who are reasonably conservative will find evidence, in Father Hill’s calm and moderate statements, that the Catholic religion is admirably suited to give stability to our own national institutions, notwithstanding its total opposition to the European liberalism and radicalism that would fain overthrow the constitutions and governments of the Old World.

In respect to style, the main point in a work of this kind is to make its ideas clearly and distinctly intelligible. The author, in general, has succeeded in his effort to accomplish this result as well as the necessity of adhering to the phraseology of Latin authors would permit. Sometimes, however, succinctness and condensation produce ambiguity and obscurity—a defect which we suspect in some instances is partly or entirely owing to errors in printing. Again, there are some words used in a way which is not conformed to the English idiom—as, for instance, the word “avert,” used intransitively, and the phrase to “put an action.” There are many minor faults of this sort which can be easily corrected in a second edition. Let us, by all means, have the other volume as soon as possible. The whole, when complete, will serve a most important end, by extending among intelligent readers of English books a knowledge and taste for scholastic philosophy. This taste, when awakened, will demand much larger and more thorough works on the same subjects. We think, moreover, that those who write these works must break away from the trammels of an artificial Latinized style and write in idiomatic English, like Dr. Newman and the best writers in the Dublin Review and Month. We desire to see works on Catholic philosophy which are as fine specimens of pure English idiom as those written by Liberatore in his native language are of a charming and literary Italian style.

I. A History of the United States for the use of Schools, Academies, and Colleges. By John R. G. Hassard, author of Life of Archbishop Hughes, Life of Pius IX., etc. 1 vol. 12mo, illustrated.

II. An Introductory History of the United States for the use of Schools. Arranged on the Catechetical Plan. 1 vol. 16mo, illustrated. New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1878.

In this history Mr. Hassard has performed a very rare feat. He has made a school-book which, while being in every respect a thorough school-book, is full of interest from cover to cover. There is not a dull page in it.

Of course the first thing that commends this book to Catholic teachers and students is that it is written by a Catholic, and Mr. Hassard’s eminent qualifications for the preparation of such a work are too well known to need any mention here. The part that Catholics played, not only in the discovery of this continent but in its exploration and colonization; the part borne by them in the War of Independence and in the later history of these United States, has been carefully forgotten, or slurred over, or misrepresented, or omitted altogether in the average history set in a boy’s hand at school. This is not history; and to remedy this capital defect, we take it, has been the chief object of Mr. Hassard’s book.

He has done his work thoroughly and in an excellent manner. He is nowhere aggressive; he is simply historical from first to last. Where Catholicity comes in he gives it its place; where it does not enter he never drags it in. He is concerned with facts, and he attends chiefly to them. How he has succeeded in grouping them together, in collecting the tangled threads of events that are scattered over a vast continent, where so many nations and tribes of men and forms of religion and government contended for the mastery; the patient skill with which he has woven these into a bright, clear, and picturesque whole, can only be judged by those who read the book, which, for our own part, we 858could not set down until we had read it through. The history begins with the discovery of the continent, and brings us down by easy yet rapid stages to our own times. The story of the Spanish colonies, the French, the English, the Dutch, are all given due prominence. The work of Catholic missionaries in exploring the continent and attempting to convert the native tribes is briefly yet fully set forth.