Chapter X: A Breeze From the West (1)

They were rather late with their coffee the next morning, and while they were taking it the bells of Santa Pudentiana, close to them, were ringing a _morto_――one, two, three, and again one, two, three――with a mournful persistence.

“It is just what we need,” the Signora said. “Our danger, at this moment, is that we may be too lightly happy. Those bells mean that a nun is dead, and that there is to be a High Mass for her in half an hour or so. Shall we go?”

Marion, who had joined them, and was sitting beside Bianca, said to her: “We are not afraid of seeing death, are we?”

“But we might be better for being reminded of it,” she said.

The ladies followed the people’s pretty fashion of putting black lace veils on their heads instead of bonnets, and had the good taste, too, to exchange their gay morning house-dresses for black ones before going to the church.

“It is the one thing in which I would have my country-women imitate the Roman ladies,” Mr. Vane said―― “in their sober costume for the church.”

The sun was scorching when they went out, and shone so brightly on the gold ground of the mosaic front of Santa Pudentiana that the figures there flickered as if painted on flame. But the sunken court had a hint of coolness, and when they entered the church they were very glad to have the light wraps the Signora had told them to bring; for the air was chilly and damp, the floor being a full story below the level of the modern street, and not a ray of sunshine entering, except what got in by the cupola. This was enough to light beautifully the mosaics of the tribune, where it is hard to believe one does not see a balcony, with the Saviour and the saints looking over, so real are the forms.

The Mass which they had come to hear was, however, nearly ended, having begun with a promptitude unusual in Rome. In a few minutes the priest left the altar, the people went away, and the lights were put out. Seeing two or three persons enter the sanctuary, and go to look through an open panel in the side wall, our party followed them, and found that the panel opened into a chapel, or chamber, beside the grand altar. This chamber was so draped as to be perfectly dark, except for the candles that burned at the head and feet of the dead nun lying there. She lay close to the open panel, and in sight of the altar where the divine Sacrifice had just been offered for her, if her eyes could have seen it. It was the emaciated but beautiful form of a woman of middle age, dressed in her religious costume, with her hands crossed on her breast, the face composed into an expression of unspeakable solemnity and peace. Awe-stricken and silent, they stood and gazed at her. They had come here from charity, indeed, but rather to temper their too earthly happiness with a merely serious thought, as one cools a heated wine with ice, making it more delicious so, than from any profound recognition of the dreadfulness of death and the perils of life. But these sealed lips spoke volumes to them, and the dark and silent church, now quite deserted, chilled them like the valley of the shadow of death through which this soul had passed――whither? It was a life dedicated to God, and given up assisted by all the sacred rites of religion; yet that face told them that death had not been met with any presuming confidence, and that before the soul of the dying religious the stern simplicity and clearness of the primitive Christian law had stood untempered by any glozings.

Marion was the first to move. Seeing Bianca look very pale, he drew her away, and the others followed.

How strange the gay sunny world looked to them when they went out! The unexpected solemnity of the scene had so drawn their minds from everything else that they had been chilled and darkened in soul as well as in body. Yet, though the warmth and light were grateful to them, they had no wish to cast entirely off that sombre impression, and would have remained in the church to pray awhile, but for the imprudence, in a sanitary point of view. Seeing, however, the door of the little church opposite, the Bambino Gesù, open, they went in there a few minutes. This church of the Infant Jesus is attached to a convent of nuns, and a company of young girls were just entering from the sacristy to make their First Communion, ranging themselves inside the sanctuary. They were dressed alike in white cashmere robes, and long silk veils in such narrow stripes of blue and white as to look like plain blue, fastened with wreaths of red and white roses. Floating slowly in with folded hands and fair, downcast faces, they knelt in a double ring about the sanctuary, leaned forward on the benches set for them, and remained motionless as statues, awaiting the coming of the Lord for the first time into their innocent hearts, as yet uncontaminated and untried by the world. At each end of the line a little boy, dressed as an angel, stood bearing a torch. For a week or ten days these girls had all been in retreat in the convent, instructed by the nuns; and when the Mass and their last breakfast together should be over, they would separate to their own homes, never to meet again, perhaps. Their parents and friends awaited them now in the church.

When the household of _Casa Ottant’-otto_ went home, they found a pile of letters and papers from America awaiting them, which they read and talked over in pauses of the dinner. There were business letters――short, if not sweet; long family letters, such as make one feel at home again, with all their familiar details and touching reminiscences; there were items of public news, descriptions of pageants in which the New World had rivalled, or surpassed, the Old; of fierce storms that had found the western continent a fitting stage to sweep their tragic skirts across; and of inundations from great crystalline rivers to which the classic Tiber is a mere muddy sewer. There was nonchalant mention of immense frauds, of fires that had devoured whole streets and squares, and reduced scores of persons to penury in a few hours, and of gigantic schemes for building up or pulling down. There were accounts of some popular indignation, in which the people had spoken without riot and been listened to, and of authority enforced, where law had conquered without bloodshed or treachery; of public sympathy with great misfortunes where no calculation of merit or reward cramped the soul of the givers, but the heart overflowed generously into the hand. In fine, there was a month’s summary of such events as those with which America, the fresco painter of the age, sketches her long, bold lines and splashes her colors on the page of time.

“America for ever!” cried Isabel, swinging a newspaper about with such enthusiasm that she nearly upset the vinegar and oil bottles at her elbow. “Do you know, my respected hearers, that at this instant my country is looking across the ocean at me with a pair of eyes like two suns. There isn’t another nation on earth that she couldn’t take between her teeth and shake the life out of. Will you excuse me while I go into the other room and play and sing just one stanza of the ‘Star-spangled Banner’?”

The Signora, who was breaking lettuce in the snowy folds of a towel, smiled beamingly on the speaker, at the same time making haste to save the imperilled cruets. “Season your admiration for a while till I have made the salad,” she said. “I would rather not have my attention distracted by patriotic music. Besides, nobody sings at noon. The birds are taking their nap, and you might wake them. Besides, again, I want you to save your voice for this evening. Some American people are coming here, and it might please them to hear the songs of their country in a strange land.”

The Americans who came that evening belonged to a party which was making a flying tour of Europe, and two of them were representatives of two distinct and extreme classes――that which scoffs at everything foreign, and that which is enchanted with everything foreign. Both were young, pretty, clever, and fairly educated, had gone through very nearly the same training, and the one had come out almost, or quite, a girl of the period, the other a girl of the past. The Signora found herself obliged, as it were, to use the curb with one hand and the whip with the other while talking with the two.

“Josephine and I are the best of friends,” said Miss Warder in her free, rapid way, “and we prove it――I by being patient with her, and she by trying my patience. The number of times in a day that girl goes into raptures over things scarcely worth looking at is almost incredible. I caught her yesterday filling a bottle with Tiber water to carry home. I believe she thinks that brook is larger than the Mississippi.”

“So it is, in one sense,” responded Miss Josephine in a soft and tranquil voice. “If you should see a little river all of tears, wouldn’t you think it more wonderful than a big river all of water?”

The Signora suggested that both might be excellent in their way.

“Then,” pursued the other, “she looks upon old families as she does on attar of roses and sandal-wood――a condensation of all that is exquisite, the rest being the refuse. Tell her that a vulgar soul often gets itself into a privileged body, and she is shocked at you. It is all I can do to keep my hands off her when I see her watching with admiring awe the affected grandeur of these little great people. For me, I laugh at them.” And she tossed her head with the scornful laugh of the democrat, at which coronets tremble.

“My dear Miss Warder,” said the Signora in her gentlest manner, “a great many wise people have looked at these things seriously.”

“Owls!” she pronounced with an air of great satisfaction. “Indeed,” she owned with a little compunction, “I hope it isn’t very bad of me, but I can’t be serious at anything I see here. To-day I nearly had a fit over a fire-engine that passed our place. It was a little sort of handcart affair with four small wheels, and a box bottom that might hold half a barrel of water. A bar at each side supported seven painted tin pails, holding about two quarts each, and there was a small brass pump in the middle of the carriage. This machine was wheeled along by five men dressed in gray pantaloons with stripes down the sides, dark blue jackets, and blue caps with a gilt band. I presume they all go home and put on that costume after the bell rings, or whatever alarm they have is given. The arrangement was just about suited to put out a bundle of matches, only the engine would be too late. The matches would be burned before it got there. I wish they could hear our electric fire-alarm once, and see our beautiful engines come flying out of their houses before the first number was well struck.”

“I am proud of our fire-engines and companies,” the Signora said; “but they do not prevent our having conflagrations such as are never known here. The little thought given to fire-extinguishing here proves the little danger there is of fires. In judging of what people do it is always well to take into consideration what is necessary to be done. One would hardly find fault with the Greenlanders for not having large ice-houses.”

“Their very _scirocco_ disappointed me,” the young woman went on, unabashed. “I had the impression that it was a tearing high wind, like a blast out of a furnace. Instead of that, it is only a warm and unwholesome breath. How different from our sweet south winds at home!”

“Speaking of winds,” said Miss Josephine, “reminds me of the trumpet-bands. How wild and stirring they are! They make on me an impression as of mingled wind and fire.”

The Signora smiled on the gentle enthusiast.

“Then,” pursued Miss Warder, “the pokey, slow ways of these people, and their ceremonies, and their compliments, and their relics――” She stopped abruptly here, recollecting that she was in a Catholic household, and had the grace to blush slightly.

“A little more ceremony and politeness would do our people at home a great deal of good,” the Signora replied coldly. “As to the relics, it need not, I should think, surprise even an unbeliever that faith should preserve her mementos as jealously as art has preserved hers, and that objects which belonged once to beings who now are the companions of angels, and see God face to face, should have been held as precious as those which have nothing but a physical beauty. Or even if the relic should be of doubtful authenticity still a thing worthless in itself, but which has been touched by the sincere veneration of centuries, has a sort of venerableness not to be mocked at. It is like the iron which has been touched by the lodestone, and so magnetized, or the dull gray mist kissed by sunbeams till it becomes beautiful and luminous. I do not know,” she added, smiling, “but you have all heard the story I am going to tell you apropos of false relics, but it was new to me when I heard it a few days ago from a clergyman. Many, many years ago a man who was going to the East was begged by a pious friend to bring him back a piece of the true cross. The voyager promised, but forgot his promise till he was near home. He did not wish to disappoint his friend; though, at the same time, he had no faith whatever in relics, or, indeed, in anything supernatural. So, after considering a while, he cut a tiny piece out of the mast of the ship in which he was returning homeward, enclosed it in a reliquary, and in due time presented it to his friend, who received it without a doubt, and, of course, told everybody what a treasure he had become owner of. The news, after awhile, reached the ears of a man possessed by a devil, and he immediately begged that the sacred relic might be brought to deliver him. The bit of the ship’s mast was, accordingly, brought with all ceremony and reverence, the devil in possession――who, of course, knew the trick that had been played――laughing, undoubtedly, at the efforts about to be made to drive him away. But when the necessary prayers had been said, no sooner did the supposed relic touch the possessed man than the devil felt himself thrust violently out and forced to fly. But he cried out in parting: ‘It is faith that drives me away, and not your chip of the old mast.’”

“That all answers perfectly, as far as the believers are concerned,” Mr. Vane said. “But I would like to know what became of that Eastern traveller.”

“The principal _dénoûment_ so overflowed and hid him out of sight that I did not ask, or have forgotten,” the Signora said. “Girls, what should have been done to the man who made the relic? Isabel?”

“He should have been at sea again in that very ship, at the time of the miraculous cure,” Isabel said. “He should have been standing by the very mast he had cut the bit out of, and a flash of lightning should have struck him dead.”

“Oh! no, Bella,” said her sister. “He should have been standing by the possessed man when he was cured, and should have been stricken with compunction, and should have confessed, and been forgiven, and been, for all the rest of his life, a model of faith and reverence.”

“Suppose,” Mr. Vane suggested, “that we should choose a medium between extreme justice and extreme charity, and say that the devil which left the possessed man entered immediately into that Eastern traveller, and tormented him by taking him on constant voyages to Jerusalem, swinging him to and fro like a pendulum, always in the same ship, till at last, after many years, his victim was enabled to make an act of perfect faith in the power and mercy of the God crucified, and so be freed from his tormentor.”

Meantime, Mr. Coleman approached Miss Warder, timid but admiring, much as one might approach a beautiful panther, and seated himself on the edge of a chair near her.

“You like Rome?” he inquired in a conciliating voice, not meaning anything whatever by the question, except to open a conversation. That was always the first thing he said to a foreigner.

The bright, laughing eyes of the girl flashed over him in one scathing glance. “It’s charming!” she said with enthusiasm. “One can ask so many questions here without being thought inquisitive. To be sure, one doesn’t always get answers to them. I asked to-day a very accomplished Monsignore the meaning of the broken arch that one sees over nearly all the altars, and he couldn’t tell me. May be you can.”

Mr. Coleman believed that it was an architectural corruption that came in with the decline of art, but could not be positive.

“I wouldn’t mind so much,” she went on, “if only they did not set on the sides of it a hu――an inhuman being, who would naturally be sure to slide off if he weren’t nailed on, as, indeed, he is. It makes one feel uncomfortable!”

The gentleman descended into the depth of his consciousness for some other subject, and came up with――

“Have you ever been to Bologna, ma’am?”

“No,” she replied; “but I have eaten Bologna sausage.”

There was another silence. The young woman folded her hands, looked modest, and awaited the next remark. It was rather slow in coming, and feeble when it came. “There are a great many Americans in Rome this winter, I believe.”

“Oh!” she said confidentially, “nothing to what there are in the United States. The country is full of them. They bother the life out of the foreigners.”

Mr. Coleman contemplated his companion’s serious face for some time with bewilderment, and at length bethought himself to smile.

“I beg your pardon!” she said, looking at him inquiringly, and with a mild surprise.

He instantly became crimson.

“I――that is, excuse me! I did not speak,” he stammered.

“Oh! you’re very excusable,” she replied, with an emphasis which gave an exceedingly doubtful meaning to the words.

In the midst of the dreadful pause that followed a polite voice was heard at the other side, where a second moth had approached this flame. It was a young Italian who was learning English with such enthusiasm that he would almost stop strangers in the street to ask definitions from them. “Would you have the gentility to do me a favor, miss?” he asked.

“That depends quite on what the favor may be,” she replied, looking at him with surprise; for the gravity and ceremoniousness of his demeanor were such as to imply that a very serious matter was in question. “I’m sure I shall be very happy to oblige you, if I can.”

“Thanks!” he said, bowing. “I learn now your beautiful and noble language, the which is also much difficult. To-day of it I have seen a phrase, the which entangles me. At first I it believed to be a beast. But in the dictionary I found another signification, but without to be able to comprehend it. The phrase is ‘Irish bull.’ Will you do me the favor to explicate me the expression?”

“Irish bull,” Miss Warder said, “means no thoroughfare. The sense goes into the sentence and sticks there; it never comes out.”

The young man looked deeply interested, but not enlightened. He did not dare to ask more, for his teacher looked at him with an air of having made a lucid explanation which any one with common sense should understand at once.

“It is a very noble language, the English,” he repeated faintly.

“I saw a perfect example of it this morning in a place the other side of the Corso,” she resumed. “A man with a donkey-cart got out of a great crowd into a place between two rows of houses, evidently expecting to find an outlet at the other end. There was none, and the passage was so narrow that to turn was impossible. Now, imagine that man with his donkey-cart to be an idea, and the houses to be words, and you will understand perfectly.”

“Oh! certainly. It is clear!” her pupil replied. “Thanks!” His eyes twinkled, though his mouth was perfectly grave. “It is, then, something that diverts. You hear the words spoken, you listen at the other end for the signification to come out, you hear it moving about here and there inside, but you never receive it. It is excellent. It would be a good fortune for the world if the people who speak and write foolish or wicked thoughts should serve themselves always of this mode of expression.”

Isabel interrupted this lesson by coming to make some friendly inquiries of her young country-woman, who, after a short conversation, gave a slight sketch of her life and adventures, speaking with the most entire frankness.

Meanwhile, Miss Josephine was talking to the Signora, who was charmed by her looks and manner, both the essence of soft and graceful beauty. She was fair, rather small, and plump, with the whiteness of an infant, and pure golden hair in thick waves fastened back from a low forehead and the most exquisite of ears with a long spray of myrtle. Her dress was of the softest gray color, close at the wrists and throat, where delicate laces turned out like the white edges of a gray cloud. The only light to this tender picture was the hair, the blue eyes, and an emerald cross, her only ornament.

“I have been to-day to see the relics of Santa Croce,” she said. “I coaxed Miss Warder not to go, though the permission included her; for she is such an unbeliever that she spoils all my pleasure in seeing such things. I am not formally a Catholic, you know, but I more than half believe. My heart is all convinced, but my head holds out yet a little. Perhaps that is because I am not well instructed. Well, I started early, so as to have a walk alone from St. John Lateran across to Santa Croce. I loitered along under the trees, perfectly happy, looking about, telling myself over and over again where I was, and gathering daisies. I looked at those daisies before I came here this evening, and every one of them had curled its little petals in, and gone to sleep, like a company of babies. In the morning they will open their eyes again. Well, I reached Santa Croce, and stood on the steps there. Everything was so quiet and beautiful, with nature so sweet, and art so magnificent. No one was near but two or three soldiers about the convent door. I knew before that the government had taken nearly all the convent. After a while I heard a trumpet-call inside, and presently company after company of soldiers, half a regiment certainly, came out and marched off to the avenue to drill. They were dressed in gray linen and white gaiters, and looked like a crowd of great moth-millers.

“A nice, bright-faced young officer was walking to and fro near me, and I spoke to him, and asked some questions. He seemed pleased to talk――I suppose he felt dull there; and when I told him about our army, and what I had seen during the war, he asked me if I would like to go in and see their quarters. Of course I said yes. So he led me in, and over the two stories, and showed me the gardens and courts at the back, and the splendid view from the south windows. What halls they were!――long, wide corridors, arched, and bordered with pilasters, with a grand stairway climbing up from one side. Unless for hospital or barracks, with long rows of beds at the sides, I cannot imagine what they were made for, except simply to look at, to walk through, and to make a great pile on the outside. It seemed building for the mere sake of building. All the beds had the mattresses folded up, with gray blankets laid on them, and a little shelf of things over the head. One room, occupied by two officers, was almost as simple. There were none of the luxuries we have. Then the view! I fancied I could see half of Italy spread out before me. ‘But I pity the poor _frati_ who have been turned out,’ I could not help saying to my guide. ’So do I,’ he answered. The soldiers are not to blame, you know. They must obey. Then I went out, and the others came, and we went up to the relic chamber. You go up a good many stairs, and through a chapel hung round with paintings, and then through low-vaulted stone passages, not high enough for a tall man to stand up in. I should think that the shape of the way we went would be like a great letter C. At the last turn we found ourselves in the little chamber, where the great relics had been set out on the altar. Behind the altar were the strong doors of the closets in the wall where these relics are kept. On the wall at the right of the door was the relic-case of Gregory the Great, about two feet square, with a glass cover, and filled with an innumerable collection of tiny relics. But all eyes were turned to the altar.

“The _frate_ who came with us put on a stole, after lighting the candles; then we all knelt while he said a prayer. And then, one by one, he brought forward the relics, and showed to each, and gave each one to kiss and touch their beads or crucifixes to, if they wished. I looked at them with wonder, and neither believed nor disbelieved. It is so hard for us Americans, you know, to believe in the antiquity of things, unless we have material proofs. The bone of the finger of St. Thomas, the thorn from the crown of thorns, the nail――they were impressive to me chiefly because saints had believed them authentic, and centuries of Catholics had venerated them. But when, at last, he took down the crystal cross from the centre of the altar, my heart melted. I felt that it was real. I wanted to snatch it, and run away by myself, and cry over and kiss it. I wished the others would kneel, but they didn’t. They looked at the relic, and kissed it, and that was all. Perhaps they were each wishing that some one else would kneel and set the example. At length, when the last one had kissed it, I dropped on my knees, and the others did the same, and the _frate_ gave us benediction with the famous old relic of the true cross that Santa Helena brought from Jerusalem. Then he put the lights out, and we came away, and some of them bought fac-similes of the nail and the inscription of the cross, and we came down all the passages again, and the painted cardinals on the walls of the upper chapel looked at us as we passed, to see if we were any better for the privilege we had received, and so down through the quiet church, and out into the sunshine again. But that crystal cross, with its three pieces of dark wood inside, has been before my eyes ever since. It must be real, for it speaks. When I think of it, I can hear all the centuries weep over it.”

She stopped, smiling but choked a little.

“Dear child!” said the Signora, and pressed the girl’s hand. “You should enter the church at once.”

There was no answer in words, but the eyes spoke in an earnest gaze, half pleading, half inquiring.

“My dear,” her friend pursued hastily, “this is no time for us to talk over such a subject; but if you would like to speak with me, and if I can do anything for you, I shall be very happy, and you can come to me quite freely at any time.”

“I shall come, then, very soon,” the girl replied, and kissed the Signora’s hand.

She had another pleasant incident of the day to tell; for she had been with a Catholic friend to see Monsignor Mermillod, who was visiting Rome, and the celebrated Archbishop of Geneva had spoken some kind words to her, and allowed her to look at his ring, in which was set a relic and an exquisite tiny painted miniature of St. Francis of Sales.

“He spoke to us of the mission of women,” she said, “and of what power women have for good and evil, and his illustration was from Dante, and Beatrice was woman leading man to Paradise. He spoke so that all my former life seemed to me trivial, and worse than lost. O dear Signora! if all men whom we wish to respect would speak so! But it really seems that to please them, and win an influence over them, to have even their respect, we must be mean. Such a man as Monsignor Mermillod requires our noblest qualities, and encourages us to be true. One doesn’t need to be blatant in order to be kindly noticed by him, nor to boast in order to be appreciated. He is so noble and clear-sighted, and his very atmosphere is charity.”

“Yes, he practises what he preaches,” the Signora replied.

When the visitors were gone, the family had a little quiet talk before separating for the night. The influence of the Signora and of Bianca, falling on minds already prepared to receive it, had been such that they took happiness, and all the delights of their daily life, not as a wine that intoxicates to forgetfulness of duty, but as an incentive to quicken their sense of duty, and a balm to alleviate the pains to come in the future. Every new pleasure that the Heavenly Father’s bounty lavished on them, day after day, was welcomed generously, but with a tender fear. Amid all this constantly-recurring beauty and sacredness they walked as among angels, hushing themselves.

A quiet word touched the key, and found all in tune; as, striking but the rim of a true bell, we hear the chord float softly up from turn to turn. Tacitly the first hesitating motion to separate was abandoned, and they drew nearer together instead, and presently made a close circle around the Signora’s chair.

“It gives the mind a stretch to hear different nations talking together, by even their feeblest representatives,” Mr. Vane had observed.

“Yes,” Marion replied, lingering, hat in hand. “It always gives me the same feeling of space and grandeur that I have at sea, when I watch the waves meet, as if the East and the West were rushing together to kiss or to tear each other.”

“I wonder,” said Bianca, “if all our national differences are to be obliterated in heaven, and if we shall have no more those little piquant characteristics and discussions which make us like each other even better here.”

The Signora sank into her armchair, quoting the famous recipe for cooking a hare: “‘First catch your hare.’ My dear friends, we are not yet in Paradise, and we have a good battle to fight before we shall get there, and I move that we look to our armor. At all events, heaven has been described for us by Him who makes it what it is.”

And then Mr. Vane came and stood at the high back of her chair, and a little beside her, and Isabel took a footstool at the other side. Marion and Bianca slipped into the sofa opposite.

“I have been thinking to-day,” she continued, “that, when we go to hear Mass in the Crypt of St. Peter, as it is not probable we shall ever meet there, all of us, again in this life, we ought all to think it a duty to receive Holy Communion, if we can. It seems to me that the special virtue we are to seek there is a stronger faith. I have been there before, but it was in the company of strangers. We are a company of sympathizing friends. I think we should look forward to that visit as a call to make a profession of faith more resolute, if possible, than we have yet made.”

A silence followed her little speech, which had struck deeper, perhaps, than their expectations.

“Has no one anything to say?” she asked smilingly. “This is not a lecture, but a _conversazione_. Are we always to skim the surface in our talk?”

“You are quite right, Signora,” Mr. Vane said, “and the same thought has passed through my own mind. I do not know if I shall be thought prepared to receive so soon, but will ask. It would be something for me to remember all my life that I had made my first communion there, and in company with all my family.”

The daughters were silent, both looking down, touched and awed by their father’s words. With all their affection and confidence, they never had known anything of his deeper feelings or more serious intentions than what their intuitive sympathy had divined. Some things they tacitly guessed, some he tacitly acknowledged; but for a spoken confidence, either given or demanded, they had each and all been more free, sometimes, with strangers. And so accustomed had the girls become to this real reserve under an appearance of perfect ease that they listened at first almost with terror to the Signora’s challenge.

“I think the children would be pleased,” Mr. Vane added gently, understanding their silence.

Then they both looked up with a quick smile and a simultaneous “Oh! yes, papa,” but said no more.

There was still another thin ice that the Signora had to break. She understood quite well the disposition and habits of Bianca’s lover, and wished particularly to bring him in with them on this occasion. A man of a noble and poetical nature, he was, perhaps, in danger of resting contented with a religious feeling born of an enthusiastic appreciation of the beauty of the church, and, while obeying its express commands in the performance of duty, of waiting for the command to be given. He watched with delight the steps of the Prince’s Daughter, his loyal word or blow was always ready for those who attacked her; but he seemed to prefer to be an admiring spectator rather than an actor, and to do only so much as would keep him in the acknowledged number of her followers. The Signora suspected that he contented himself with an Easter Communion, and that there was many a night when he lay down to sleep without recommending himself to God, and many a morning when he rose without giving thanks for another day. If he looked out at the early dawn with delight in its beauty, he felt that he had praised God; and if, gazing up into the starry midnight, he thought of the shadowy earth as a hammock swung by invisible cords from a thick tree full of golden blossoms, it seemed to him that he had kissed the hand that rocked him to sleep. Intoxicated by the beauty of the works of God, he exulted in the freedom from baseness which the magical draught gave him, and could scarcely believe that in some unwary hour he might draw in a drop of poison with the honey. He had been wont to say that the virtue of the long-suffering Job had been preserved, not so much by shutting his bodily eyes and praying, as by opening his eyes, and looking about where flood and stream, and snow and hail and dew taught each its lesson, unmarred by earthly glosses; that that man was surer to fear God who looked at the leviathan making the deep boil like a pot, leaving a shining path behind him over the waters, and saying this is the work of God, than the man who, when he would raise his soul, left his senses behind, and strove to climb to a knowledge of the power of God without them.

The Signora knew all this, and admired Marion, winged creature that he was; but she wished him to practise a little more the plain and simple duties of religion. She observed that he made no motion to assent to her proposal, and made haste to take for granted that he would assent, and spare him a promise.

“Then,” she said, “since we are to have this heavenly audience together, let us make a small part of the preparation together. How lovely it would be if we could every night say our prayers together, or a part of them, at least! We will not have company late, and Marion lives near us, and can take his little starlit walk half an hour later without any inconvenience. Let us say certain prayers together expressly in preparation for this communion. We are five. Each one shall choose a prayer.”

She scarcely paused, feeling that there was still a shyness to overcome, and that her proposal had been bold and unusual. The thought fired instead of checking her.

“However closely we may be bound, however sure in our own minds to spend many years together,” she added hastily, “we may be scattered like the dust before another day passes. Till we, as closest and dearest of friends, have prayed together, we have not well deserved the power of speech nor the consolations of friendship.”

“I choose the Acts of Faith, Hope, Love, Thanksgiving, and Contrition,” Mr. Vane said.

“I choose the Salve Regina,” Marion added.

Bianca named the Memorare, and Isabel three Our Fathers, three Hail Marys, and three Glorias.

“And I choose the prayer to the Five Wounds,” said the Signora. “We each will say our own prayer, and the others answer Amen. Mr. Vane shall begin.”

They were astonished, not only into compliance, but into willingness and pleasure. The Signora’s will and enthusiasm blew away all the foolish scruples and false delicacy which would have for ever prevented the others making such a proposition, and the five Catholics knelt together in the room softly lighted by the night and the Virgin’s lamp, and said their prayers together.

It was a strange yet sweet experience for all, this first union in family prayers. Mr. Vane, uttering his prayers with an earnest gravity, gave the tone to the others; and when Marion called on the Queen of Heaven to hear their cry, as that of the poor exiled children of Eve coming up from a valley of tears, the Signora’s proposition showed no more an extraordinary one, but altogether proper and necessary.

They rose when all was over, and stood silent a moment. It was a silence full of peace and of a new sense of union.

Marion was the first to speak. “You have strung us to-night like beads on a corona, “he said, taking the Signora’s hand. “May the chain endure for ever!”

They parted very quietly, and for the first time Bianca and Marion said good-night to each other without appearing to remember that they were lovers, or remembering it so seriously that no one else was reminded of it.

The Signora went to her room thankful and contented. In spite of her courage, what she had done had been very difficult for her, and nothing but her position toward the others of hostess and _cicerone_ had made it seem proper to her. The ice was broken, however, and successfully; they had gone together to their Heavenly Father, and they could never again be strangers to each other nor to him. She was thankful and contented.

TO BE CONTINUED.

SOME QUAINT OLD CITIES.[195]

The Zuyder-Zee will soon be a thing of the past, and in the meanwhile it is but little known. M. Henri Havard, known as an art-critic, has given us a glimpse of it, with its decaying ports, its old-fashioned population, its wonderful atmospheric “effects”; and his book is, strange to say, newer to most readers than one treating of the South Sea Islands or the Japanese Archipelago. Not only is the Zuyder-Zee comparatively unknown to foreigners, but, according to Havard, “it is more than probable that not ten people in Holland have made this voyage, and among writers and artists I do not know a single one.”

The navigation of this sea is difficult and dangerous; narrow channels run between enormous sandbanks hardly covered with water. Tales of shipwreck abound in every page of the history of the Zuyder-Zee, and great carcases of ships, breaking up or rotting away, call to mind its dangers. There is no regular communication between the various ports, and M. Havard and his companion, M. Van Heemskerck, had to hire a vessel, engage a crew, and purchase provisions for the voyage. The vessel was called a “tjalk,” and drew only three feet of water; her burden was sixty tons. The crew consisted of the “schipper,” one sailor or “knecht,” and the wife and child of the former. The travellers put up partitions forming kitchen, dining-room, and bed-room, and did the cooking by turns. They started in June, 1873, leaving Amsterdam in the early morning; and, says the author, after a minute description of the Preraphaelite country surrounding the principal sea-port of Holland, “the sun which brightened this magnificent spectacle rendered the atmosphere clear and of a silvery transparence; reflected by the water, the effect was splendid.” The first object of interest which they met with were the sluices at Schellingwoude. “These blocks of granite, imported from distant countries, massed one upon the other, form an immovable mountain; the great gates, which allow five ships to enter abreast, have something majestic about them which impresses the beholder. I know nothing finer than these sluices, save, perhaps, those of Trolhätten in Sweden.”

The drowsy, pleasant, monotonous impression of the interminable green meadows, or _polders_ (reclaimed from the sea), the huge windmills, the few church-steeples of fantastic shapes and varied colors, the yellow sand-banks, is minutely described, and then the travellers come upon the island of Marken, like “a green raft lost in a gray sea.” Seven villages are built on as many little mounds, with a mound used as a church-yard. The wealth of Marken is in hay and fish. The meadows are flooded once a year. Trees never grow on the island, and most of the houses are raised on piles, and look like “great cages suspended in the air.” There is a peculiarity about the bed-rooms which remind us of the cupboard-beds common among the poorer classes in Scotland: “The ground-floor is one large room divided into as many parts as may be required by wooden partitions without ceilings; the roof――which is, of course, leaning at an angle――is hung with nets and fishing utensils.… The bed is the important article of furniture; this is let into the wall in a kind of cupboard, into which are thrust the mattresses and other necessary articles. Two little curtains are drawn across.… It looks as much as possible like a large drawer. Sometimes considerable luxury is displayed in the bed; the pillow-cases and the sheets are embroidered with open-work, which is a special fabrication of the women at Marken――white and yellow threads crossed, something in the fashion of guipure.” The walls or partitions are mostly painted blue, the shelves are heaped with common crockery and Japanese porcelain, for which there is an extravagant demand all over Holland; a Friesland cuckoo-clock stands in one corner, a carved oak chest in another, and on this are tall glasses, bulging mugs of delf, and miraculously-polished old candlesticks of yellow metal. One of the chief worthies of Marken, Madame Klok, has the richest collection in the island: china of all sorts (Dutch and Japanese) and all colors, pictures, foreign curiosities such as sailors always fill their houses with, are there in profusion; but what she is most proud of is her carved oak chests, all of Dutch make, their panels sculptured with great art, and seeming only just to have left the hands of the artist. The women of Marken have clung to their distinctive dress, and, partly on that account, are thought very uncivilized by the young Hollanders, to whom freedom and Paris fashion have become synonymous terms. This dress is very peculiar, and Havard says very picturesque. Here is part of his description:

“The head-dress is composed of an immense cap in the form of
a mitre, white, lined with brown, to show off the lace and
embroidery; it is tied close under the chin, pressing
closely over the ears.… Long ringlets of blonde hair fall
down to the shoulders or back, and the hair of the front is
brought forward and cut square along the forehead a little
above the eyebrows. The gown has a body without sleeves, and
the skirt or petticoat is independent of it, and always of a
different stuff. The body is brown, and generally of cloth
covered with embroidery in colors, in which red
predominates.… This requires years of labor. A _corsage_
well embroidered is handed down from mother to daughter as
an heirloom; the sleeves are in two unequal parts: one, with
vertical lines of black and white, reaches the elbow, and
the other, almost to the wrist, is of dark blue, and is
fastened above the elbow.… The skirt is also divided into
two unequal parts: the upper, which is about eight inches
wide only, is a kind of basque with black lines on a light
ground; the rest of the skirt is dark blue, with a double
band of reddish brown at the bottom.… Such is the female
costume of Marken, … so singular that no other costume is
like it, or even approaches its bizarre appearance.”

These old Dutch settlements all possess many churches, but most of them disfigured by paint and other monstrosities. The Premonstratensian monks had a monastery at Marken, having come there from Leeuwarden; but the old Marienhot, turned to other uses, was pulled down in 1845 on account of its ruinous condition. At Monnikendam, “the town of the monks,” one of the dead cities――for Marken is only a cluster of villages――there is what is now called the Great Church, but was originally the Abbey of St. Nicholas. It has eighty great pillars in the nave alone, and was built in the fifteenth century, though according to the style of an earlier day. It is now a “_temple_” (Calvinist meeting-house); the columns are whitewashed, there is a modern, bulbous pulpit with green curtains, and the nave is full of ugly, closed pews in the taste of the eighteenth century.

Havard describes Monnikendam as having a Chinese appearance through its “green trees, the red and green coloring of the houses and roofs, and the little gray wooden bridge.” In 1573 it had the honor of taking a prominent part in the great naval battle of the Zuyder-Zee, when Cornelius Dirkszoon, a native of Monnikendam, destroyed the Spanish fleet and took the admiral, Count de Bossu, prisoner. The town kept the count’s collar of the Golden Fleece as a trophy. Though the monks have disappeared, the town still preserves its arms――a Franciscan monk, habited sable (black), holding a mace in his right hand, the shield being _argent_, or white. The tower of the Great Church is of enormous height, and Havard, as he looked down on the rich plains below, wondered at the insensibility of the inhabitants to the treasures of nature and art within their reach. This deserted place――where the arrival of two strangers was an event of universal importance, to be talked of at least a month after they had gone, and where the old office of town-crier was discharged by a wizened individual in a black dress-coat, knee-breeches, and three-cornered hat, whose duty of fixing notices to the doors of such houses as contained patients attacked by a contagious disease reminds us of the seventeenth century――was once “a flourishing commercial city, one of the twenty-nine great towns of Holland, when the Hague was but a village.”

Between Edam and Hoorn (the latter being the pearl of the dead cities) the tjalk encountered a terrible storm of wind, which was succeeded by as wonderful a calm. The author says:

“I turned my head (towards the eastern horizon) and saw one
of the most curious spectacles I ever contemplated in my
life. From the hull of the boat to the top of the mast, from
the zenith to the nadir, all was of the same tint. No waves,
no clouds, no heavens, no sea, no horizon were to be
distinguished――nothing but the same tone of color,
beautifully soft; at a short distance a great black boat,
which seemed to rest on nothing, and to be balanced in
space. The sea and the sky appeared of a pearl-gray color,
like a satin robe; the boat looked like a great blot of ink.
Nothing can give an idea of this strange spectacle; words
cannot describe such a picture. Turner, in his strangest
moods, never produced anything so extraordinary.”

The harbor of Hoorn is now “bordered by masses of verdure,
great trees, and flowers. The place of these charming
plantations and gardens was once occupied by ship-building
yards, from whence sailed annually whole fleets of
newly-constructed ships. Hoorn is really one of the
prettiest towns which can be found, and at the same time the
most curious. It is entirely ancient. All the houses are old
and attractive, covered with sculptures and charming
bas-reliefs――every roof finishing in the form of stairs.
Everywhere wide _auvents_ jutting out over doors and
windows; everywhere carved wood and sculptured stone. The
tone of color of the bricks is warm and agreeable to the
eye, giving these ancient habitations an aspect of gayety
and freshness which contrasts in a singular manner with
their great age and ancient forms.… It seems almost
ridiculous to walk about these streets in our modern
costumes. It almost appears to me that there are certain
towns where only the plumed hat, the great trunk-hose and
boots, with a rapier at our side, are in keeping with the
place; and Hoorn is one of these places.”

The emptiness of the streets, the want of all animation, is the shadow of the picture, and the author brings to mind the former bustling prosperity of Hoorn, “filled by an active population, covering the seas with their fleets and the Indies with their counting-houses. Every week a thousand wagons entered the markets, bringing in mountains of cheese from the rich countries around.… Each year there was a bullock fair, first established in 1389, which drew visitors from all corners of Europe. Frenchmen, Danes, Frisons, Germans, and Swedes flocked into the town, and thus augmented its astonishing prosperity. Hoorn then counted twenty-five thousand inhabitants.” It had “massive towers and monumental gates,” and bastions and ramparts, whose place is now occupied by beautiful gardens, shaded by fine trees, and boasting of the few remaining ruinous towers and gates as of picturesque adornments――nothing else. The gate at the entrance of the harbor is of “magnificent proportions and superb in its details.… Among the sculptures I remarked a cow which a peasant-girl is seen employed in milking――a homage to the industry of the country which once enriched the town.” On the top of the other old gate――the Cowgate――is a group of two cows, and on the side facing the town four cows are represented standing, while the heraldic lions by their side support the escutcheon of the town, the arms being a hunting-horn. The remains of the old commerce of Hoorn may be seen on Thursdays, when a market is held in the town, and quantities of cheeses still arrive.

“The numbers of people on foot who pour into the town, the
carved and heterogeneously-painted wagons, carts, tilburies,
and all kinds of old-fashioned conveyances passing through
the east gate, almost incline one to believe that the good
old times have once more returned to this city. Farmers and
cattle-dealers and their wives arrive in the carriages, for
the market-day is a holiday; … they sit stolidly in or upon
these antediluvian vehicles. I say stolidly; for I do not
know a better term to express the calm, silent, reflective
look of both husbands and wives.… At ten o’clock the
market-place resembles a park of artillery whence the guns
have been withdrawn. The red cheeses piled up by thousands
represent to the life the cannon-balls rusted by exposure to
the air and rain.”