Chapter VII (1)

A secret fault, drawing with it its terrible consequences, interlaced one with another, like a nest of venomous serpents, had already cost the one who committed it her happiness and life, and the one who conceived it her reason; for Nora, shocked into insanity by the fearful curse and death of her mistress, was the inmate of a madhouse. But its hideous trail continued still, entangling and envenoming the hitherto tranquil life of the General Count of Alcira. The good old man never ceased to reproach himself for the cruel epithet indignation had forced from his lips; the only expression he had ever uttered that could wound the poor worn heart that implored but one pious word to permit it to cease its beating in peace. Instead of that word, he had cast the cruel taunt under which it had burst in despair. He wept burning tears for not having conceded the pardon which could have been but one instant wanting to his generous soul. And that instant had been her last. His forgiveness might have soothed her anguish, prolonged her life, and sweetened her death; and he had refused it. This remembrance became in its turn a remorse, and poisoned his existence.

The reaction he experienced, with his natural goodness of heart, had the effect to render almost excusable in his eyes a fault counterbalanced by so many shining qualities, and blotted out by such unparalleled remorse and by mortal sufferings; for death, when it takes its prey, has the sweet prerogative of carrying with it under the earth the evil it has done, leaving the good behind for an epitaph.

The general atoned for that one moment in which he had forgotten to be a Christian by multiplied works of charity, offered in sacrifice to obtain from heaven the pardon earth had denied the penitent, and by incessant offerings for the repose of her soul. Offerings which the Eternal would receive; for the Creator has not left man a foundling. He has acknowledged him as a son, has given him precepts, and promised him, from the cross, a glorious inheritance.

Every morning a mass was offered for the rest of her whose image dwelt in the heart of the old man who knelt at the foot of the altar, uniting his fervent petitions with those of the priest that was sacrificing.

The general's life was still more embittered by the painful secret which oppressed and involved him and his sons with him, as the serpent in the group of the Laocoon makes both father and sons his prey. He could not break the arcanum without sacrificing the one to whom his kind heart clung with tender affection, without defaming the sacred ashes of the mother of his children. He, therefore, respecting the youth and innocence of his boys, kept the fatal secret, which, in truth, he had not the courage to reveal. The time, he argued within himself, when the veil must be withdrawn from such a sad and cruel reality will come soon enough. Sometimes he resolved to let it be buried with him. But what right had he, a man of such strict principles, to deprive his heirs of their inheritance in favor of a stranger? Could he make an alien the head of his noble house? {252} Allow a foundling to usurp the rights of its lawful representatives? Worldly fathers would rather listen to the opinion of the world than to the voice of conscience, placing social considerations above its decisions, persuading it that they are compelled thereto by circumstances. But let no one compound with conscience, lest she cease to be conscience; lest she become a conniver instead of a sentinel, a weather-cock instead of a foundation; lest she lose the respect and confidence she is bound to inspire. For she should give her decisions as the sun sends forth his rays, with nothing to hinder them or turn them from their direction.

The years sped onward. The count grew infirm and saw his end approaching. Wishing to pass the last days of his life in the society of his children, and feeling that he ought to reveal the secret he had kept so long, he sent for them to join him in Chiclana, where he wished to die, in order to be buried beside his wife, thereby giving her, even after he was dead, a last public testimony of affection and respect.

The word enlightenment had not then been brought into use, nor had the colleges been modernized. Yet this did not prevent the three brothers from being such finished and accomplished gentlemen that the sight of them filled their father's heart with pleasure and pride.

Ramon, the eldest, came from the school of artillery, where he had been the companion of Daoiz and Velarde. The second came from the academy of marine guards, the academy which produced the heroes of Trafalgar, those Titans who contended with a powerful adversary, with the treachery of an ally, and with the unchained fury of the elements, and who were crushed, not vanquished, by the three united. The youngest arrived from the university of Seville, in which, at that time, or a little before, the Listas, Reinosas, Blaneos, Carvajales, Arjonos, Roldanes, and the worthy, wise, and exemplary Maestre, were students. For though Spain has lacked railroads, hotels, and refined and sensual means of entertainment, she has never, in any epoch, lacked wise men and heroes.

The general looked at the three in turn with an indefinable expression of tenderness; but when his glance fell upon Ramon, he lowered his eyes to hide the tears that filled them.

His vivid pleasure at the sight of his children, mingled with the anguish of knowing that over the head of the unconscious Ramon the sword of Damocles was suspended, agitated the old man so much that he passed the night in feverish wakefulness, and his state on the following morning was such that his doctors advised him to make his last preparations. The grief of his children, by whom he was adored, was heart-rending. But the general was so well prepared to leave the world and appear before the bar of God, that his last dispositions, though solemn, were short and serene.

Toward night, feeling himself grow weaker every moment, he made arrangements to be left alone with his sons, who drew near his bed, repressing their tears in order not to afflict him.

He looked long at them, and then said: "My children, I am about to tell you a cruel secret, which will make one of you wretched. It has lain for many years buried deep in my soul; but I am dying, and can be its repository no longer. O my God! my heart gives the lie to my lips; and, nevertheless, one of you is not my son, and the mother at whose grave you go to pray never bore you."

The grieved astonishment which manifested itself in the countenances of the three youths, left them pale, speechless, and overwhelmed.

"You know well," continued the father, after a pause, "that my interest and tenderness, in and toward you all have been the same, and that it cannot be known, even to yourselves, which of you has no right to bear my name. And you, my children, which one of you is it that does not feel for me the affection of a son?"

The simultaneous and eloquent reply of the three was to throw themselves, suffocated by their sobs, into the arms of the good old man.

{253}

"Alas! then," he proceeded, "if your own hearts do not tell you, it is my cruel duty to declare it."

The youths regarded each other for a moment, and then, with one impulse embracing each other, exclaimed with one voice:

"Father, we will not know it!"

The father raised his hands and eyes to heaven. "My God," he cried, "I thank thee! I die contented. My sons, my sons! may the satisfaction of having hidden for ever an unhappy secret, may the remembrance of having covered with a mantle of holy fraternal love the misfortune of one of yourselves, make your lives as happy and tranquil as you have made my death."

And laying his hands upon the heads of the three brothers, who had knelt at his bedside, he said: "Let my last words be your recompense. My sons, I leave you my blessing!"

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Mercersburg Philosophy.

By A. Protestant.

[As allusion having been made in the article on Dr. Bacon, which appeared
in our April number, "to the German Reformed Presbyterians and Dr.
Nevin," has called forth the following communication. We publish it as
interesting to our readers who will bear in mind in its perusal that it
is from a Protestant source, and while making, therefore, an allowance
for some of its statements, will at the same time be not a little
surprised that one who sees so much Catholic truth should fail to
identify what he sees with the Catholic Church.--Ed. C. W.]

From the mountain village of Mercersburg in Pennsylvania emanated a philosophy--theology we, who are its prophets and adherents, call it--which has done much, and is destined to do more, to unprotestantize Protestantism. Nor do we, who are Protestants, regret this. The longer we ponder our work the more are we convinced of its utility, and confirmed in our resolution to pursue it. Well aware, as we are, that the Reformation has proved a failure, except it be as a preparation for a higher form of Christianity to follow nearer the old landmarks, and free from the democratic tendencies that have crept into the Protestant Church from the institutions of the state, or which, perhaps, more properly have moulded the institutions of the state themselves as the natural outgrowth of the system taught by Luther and Calvin, we cannot but rejoice that this is so. Our people have a natural desire to worship, instead of being compelled to give an intellectual assent to arguments on points of doctrine, and the teachers of the Mercersburg philosophy are determined to gratify them.

We see clearly, what many others have failed to see, that New England Unitarianism, and after it infidelity, to which it leads, are not only the logical but the actual consequences of Protestantism. But we believe in historical development; and as this is development in the wrong direction, we see nothing before us but to profit by the lesson and retrace our steps. We know that a cult which rejects the Christ and elevates the Jesus will soon degrade the Jesus too, and that, following an attempt to attain to merely human excellence, will be a society distorted by the vices of vanity, avarice, and selfishness, and then a gradual obliteration of all the virtues. Men are beginning to see, dimly enough, that this age is a transition period in the world's history, when all our conceptions of truth, that is, Protestant conceptions of truth, are unsettled and passing through crucible, as it were, to come out in new and untried forms. {254} But they do not understand the law of transition periods, and, while they acknowledge that the last great transition was the Reformation, they fail to perceive that the theories embraced at that time have failed. A certain feeling of disappointment at the work sectarianism has wrought sometimes oppresses them, but, instead of attempting to bridge over the chasm, they endeavor to tear away the broken arches which remain.

Everybody can see that Protestantism had a grand start during the first thirty years of its existence. That Rome would soon give its last convulsive gasp seemed patent to the eyes of all reformers; but now, after three hundred years of Protestant endeavor, a leading Protestant clergyman of New York is constrained to say that "Protestant Christendom betrays signs of weakness in every part," and to declare, and rejoice in the declaration, that "Modern life is not 'Christian' in any intelligible sense. The industrial interest is openly averse to it both at home and abroad. Political life is, if possible, still more unchristian." But continues the same authority: "If industry, politics, literature, art, have abandoned Christ, they have as fully and unreservedly embraced Jesus." Now this is either sheer nonsense or it is downright infidelity. About the premises there can be no doubt. It is but a small part of the so-called Christian church that looks to Christ as the central fact of the system--the super-natural agency working through the church for the salvation of men. But the broad churchmen, when they have as fully and unreservedly embraced what they understand by Jesus as they now believe they have, will discover that the "touching devotion to the cause of humanity," about which they talk so eloquently, will develop itself into pure selfishness, and the rapacity of Wall street and the heartlessness of Madison square will extend their ramifications through every order of society.

Seeing that ostentatious wealth is about to be at a premium, and unobtrusive piety at a discount, we, who believe in the Mercersburg philosophy, are endeavoring to interpose our hands to stay the sweeping tide.

I hope I have now laid the grounds with the readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD for an enunciation of what we believe and teach.

The cardinal principle of the system we inculcate is the incarnation, viewed not as a mere speculative fact, but as a real transaction of God in the world. Thus, our belief is peculiarly christological in its character, all things being looked at through the person of the crucified and risen Saviour. The church which he founded is an object of faith--a new creation in the natural world working through the body of Christ and mediating super-naturally between him and his people. Its ministers hold a divine commission from him by apostolical succession. Its sacraments are not mere signs, but seals of the grace they represent. Baptism is for the remission of sins. The Eucharist includes the mystical presence of Christ by the power of the Holy Ghost; that is, the real presence in a mystery. With these dogmas we started, contending that we had all the attributes that were ascribed to the church in the beginning--unity, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity.

It is now many years since the work was started--as many, indeed, as were required for the Reformation in Europe to reach the acme of its success. Since then a growing culture and enlarged views of doctrine and of worship have seemed to require an enlargement of the range within which the movement was originally intended to be confined, and beyond which we did not conceive of its expansion. The time has been spent in educating the backward up to the starting-point, and in preparing a better form of worship for them when they are sufficiently advanced to receive it. {255} The movement commenced at Marshall College. "Old Marshall," which started as a high school for boys and was soon after endowed, though sparingly, as a college, has since been merged with another with more money, but without the prestige, and, alas! without the true spirit of the philosophy of the mountain college. In the same village with this institution is the theological seminary of a church, respectable for numbers and influence, though without fashionable appointments or pretensions to popular favor, which still retains the true ring of the old metal. Some time after its foundation, it came to be presided over by a man of rare genius as a theological writer and thinker, who was also president of the college. Profound in his conceptions of truth and logical in his reasoning, be possessed an unbounded influence over those who came under his instructions, and but few young men have sat at the feet of this Gamaliel without going away fully indoctrinated with his peculiar opinions, and zealous standard-bearers in carrying forward the work which he had begun.

Many prejudices had to be encountered and overcome in carrying forward this work. Bigotry and prejudice are barriers against which reason and religion strike in vain. Many who placed their hands to the plough turned back in the furrow. Opposition made the seed strike deeper root, and in the very slowness of the work is an earnest of its ultimate triumph. It may take us us nearer to Rome than we contemplate just now; it may bring Rome nearer to us than she at present desires. Come what will of it, it is plain sailing to us, although we cannot see land on either horizon. Nor do we see such cause for terror in the "horrors and superstitions of popery" which many men believe constantly lurks there. It seems to us that what men call Romanism may not be such a bad thing after all. We know it has done much good. A church that was a power in the days of the old Roman empire, and could not be overwhelmed by the tide of barbarism that overturned the power of the Caesars, but could finally roll back that tide of darkness, preserving Christianity through ages which have not left a vestige of the universal wreck behind, has certainly claims upon our profoundest gratitude and most reverential awe. To us, it would seem strange, indeed, that the vehicle for the preservation of Christianity through ages when civilization was blotted out, and which did preserve not only its essence but its form, should be the mystical Babylon and the man of sin.

Were this, indeed, so, we know in what desperate straits we would be placed. The form of the primitive church is generally flippantly declared by Protestants to have been nearer the system of New England than old England; and the Roman hierarchy is regarded as a long distance from either, which it certainly is. It is easy to assume that in the earlier ages of the church there was no papacy, no priesthood, no liturgy, no belief in a supernatural virtue in baptism, nor of the real presence in the sacrament, and that everything was quite in accordance with modern ideas of private judgment, popular freedom, and common sense; but it is not so easy to prove it, nor indeed is it desirable even for Protestants that it should be proved. The Reformation has always been understood to have been the historical product of the church itself; but if these assumptions were well founded, the church out of whose bosom the Reformation sprang would be no church at all, and the Reformation no reformation, but only a revolution. Thus, indeed, Christianity would be the theory of a philosopher, but not the life of a Christian.

The work we have been doing is different from Puseyism even in its spirit. The simplicity of Keble and the earnestness and power of Newman, in the days of their early zeal when these two wrought together, is nearer to what we intend if different from what we have accomplished or may yet accomplish. We thank the Roman Catholic Church for its Christian year, its symbols of faith, its traditions of battle and of conquest, its early martyrology, and its unceasing and undying purpose. {256} Nor do we conceal that there are some things in the Roman Catholic Church to which we object. These are rather historical defects than present imperfections, and we see as much in our own history to regret and to condemn.

I well remember the unpretending little church in which it was my privilege to worship in a country town of Pennsylvania. The Episcopalians had no foothold there, and the Presbyterians consequently, combining together at once the imperiousness and the exclusiveness for which they have ever been distinguished, pretended to monopolize the fashion and the piety, the society and the religion, of the village. They, of course, contemned us, and opened wide their doors for our disorganizers, who were crying out against innovation when we were seeking to make our church a place of worship, instead of a bazaar for the display of fine clothing and false curls. The Methodists, living only the false life of a sickly sentimentality, and the Lutherans degraded even from the doctrines and practices Luther taught in his fiery zeal, were absorbed in their childish schemes of marrying and giving in marriage, engaged in special efforts at reform by revivals and meetings of religious inquiry, and busied in raising subscriptions for objects like Mrs. Jellaby's mission at Borrioboola-Gha or Sunday-school libraries which would not be sectarian, had little time to think of us after they received their quietus in the "anxious bench" controversy of 1843. There were, indeed, many solemn conclaves over our affairs by gossips who neither understood nor wished to understand the work we were doing, and half in fear that we should be lost for too much reverence for mother church, and half in joy at the prospect of a few proselytes, everybody affected to commiserate us. But these, though often working mischief among our "weaker vessels," were not seriously opposed by us. Our purpose was steadily kept in view, notwithstanding.

It was by preaching principally that we hoped to accomplish our task, and, after the stubborn fallow of an unworked field had been broken, to recur gradually to the forms of the church. But the furrows, we felt, would be an empty mockery without the teachings that give them force. To inculcate truth was then our first duty. This was often done by the more earnest and intelligent of our clergy, by following up the seasons of the Christian calendar and deriving lessons from each. Incidentally was urged, with more or less boldness according to the courage and temper of the man whose duty it was to enforce them, doctrines which for many years sounded strangely to Protestant ears. Among these, besides those already noticed in this paper, I may instance, as an example least expected by Catholics to be urged anywhere outside of mother church itself, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Starting with the proposition that that which is holy cannot be born of that which is unclean and sinful, I have time and again heard this theme urged upon his people with force and fervor by an earnest and fervent pastor. Not with equal boldness, perhaps, but with no less sincerity and fervor have I heard him urge the ministrations of the Virgin. Often in declaring these doctrines he would enforce a proposition by putting it in the form of a question, and one of these, I believe, I shall continue to hear ringing in my ears while the words of men remain intelligible to me: Why should we not reverence the mother of our Lord?

These things may be news to Catholics, and may be news even to many in whose ears they have been thundered for a quarter of a century. The latter hear without understanding, but the words will be re-echoed in their hearing until they are not terms without meaning. {257} The Mercersburg philosophy is the antagonism in thought and in its social aspects of New England transcendentalism and Plymouth Rock conventionalisms, and receives no favor, and merits none, from a people among whom Dr. Holmes's Elsie Venner is an exponent of the life and practice of the present, as Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World was of past generations. And Pennsylvania, where this philosophy has its stronghold, being unlike New England, of which Dr. Mather said, "Being a country whose interests are remarkably inwrapped in ecclesiastical circumstances, ministers ought to concern themselves in politics," the body of the people who compose the German Reformed Church, and who look back to the Heidelberg Catechism as their earliest enunciation of faith, and the Mercersberg theology as their latest development of truth, have never felt the need of political preaching. A simple motto includes all their aspirations, their hopes, and their fears, their preaching, their practice, and their eternal reward--CHRIST CRUCIFIED.

------

Original.

A Family Motto.

A well proportioned ancient shield,
And on the azure-tinted field
The red crusader's cross:
Words scarce could tell at what a loss
The well-read scholar stood--
In what an earnest, startled mood,
Beneath the ancient, comely shield,
And red cross on the azure field,
This motto's thread
He whispering read,
"_Fortiter gerit crucem_."

A true crusader, staunch and bold,
Was he, my good ancestor old,
Who thus could boast his cross
He bore unmindful of the loss:
"Strong, strong his cross to bear,"
Comes down in characters most fair;
Comes down a glory unto me
Through many a bloody century;
The good seed kept
Though old faith slept,
"_Fortiter gerit crucem_."

{258}

Though old faith slept! a deep blush came
Across his cheek, a blush of shame:
That bold crusader's cross,
Borne in the very teeth of loss,
No longer worn with pride;
His conscience told him, laid aside
Like some base superstitions's sign:
That cross which from high heaven will shine.
When men shall hear,
With joy or fear,
"_Fortiter gerit crucem_."

Years passed; his quickened eye had scanned
The archives rich of many a land.
Yet still a purpose, named
Not to himself, each spoil had claimed;
And day by day to hail
On truth's horizon some new sail,
Strange sweetness sent through all his veins,
Till to his contrite breast he strains
That cross severe,
While angels hear,
"_Fortiter gerit crucem_."

------

From The Month.

"He Went About Doing Good."

The memory of the French _émigrés_ in England must be almost extinct. A few survivors may remain among us, who can just remember the marquis with faded decorations who taught them French or drawing, or the venerable abbé who patted them on the head and whispered his blessing. But the horrors that led to the sudden appearance on our shores of several thousand French exiles, the burst of compassion and friendliness with which they were welcomed, the sustained respect which they continued to excite, the noble efforts successfully made, under the crushing pressure of a fearfully expensive war, to provide for their wants, and the recompense that came in the shape of prejudices cleared away and preparation for the reception of truth--these things are now matters of history, and we have few traditions of them to supply the place of recollection. They do not even enter much into our current literature. In our own younger days the courteous and dignified, although threadbare, French nobleman, and even the snuff-box and shoe-buckles and silver hairs of the kind-hearted French priests, not unfrequently figured in the moderate supply--very different from the present inundation--of tales and works of fiction which sufficed for the wants of that remote epoch. We know of no work of note of the present day in which use is made of the character of an _émigré_, except the Tale of Two Cities; and that is hardly an exception, since the exiles there introduced are little more than pegs to the story. We would gladly know more of the intercourse of our grandfathers with these confessors for the faith, of the homage which their courage and cheerfulness extorted, and especially of the working of that influence for good, which, indirectly, must have had vast effects, and have tended greatly both to accelerate the removal of the penal laws, and to bring about that reaction toward the church of which we are now reaping the harvest; and which, even directly, was probably the cause of very numerous conversions. {259} A memorandum found among the papers of Abbé Carron, with the title, "A little memorandum most precious to my heart and to my faith," contained a list of fifty-five Protestants received by him into the church before the year 1803; and many more, whose names did not appear in that list, were known to have been converted by his ministry. The simple fact that, within twelve years after the public burning of Catholic chapels and the houses of Catholics in London, our parliament was voting money by acclamation to support several thousands of foreign priests who were in exile purely for their loyalty to the Catholic Church, is at first sight almost startling. The British lion must surely have worn rather a puzzled expression of countenance when he found himself bringing bread to popish priests of the most thoroughly popish kind, and respectfully licking their hands. While great admiration is really due to the generosity of the noble animal on this occasion, it is perhaps only fair, as well as obvious, to remark, that he probably somewhat confounded the cause of the clergy, who suffered only for their faith, with that of the exiles in general, and was somewhat influenced by his hatred first of the _sans-culottes_, and afterward of Bonaparte. The clergy, however, although for the most part very strongly attached to the French throne, were quite ready to work on under any government, and in whatever privations, and were driven into exile or threatened with death solely for the same sort of offence as that of St. Thomas of Canterbury, of Fisher and More; that is, for their repudiation of the wry principle which is the essential basis of the so-called Church of England.

An exceedingly interesting life,[Footnote 54] notwithstanding its somewhat superfluous diffuseness, has lately been published at Paris of the venerable Abbé Carron, to whom the Catholics of London are indebted for the chapel and schools of the Somers-town Mission, and indirectly, through his successor Abbé Nerinckx, for the establishment among us of the "Faithful Companions of Jesus."

[Footnote 54: Vie de l'Abbé Carron, par un Bénédictin de la
Congrégation de France. Paris, 1866.]

We can hardly help envying the good religious who has sent forth this huge volume of nearly 700 pages, the thorough roominess in which he carries on his labor of love; omitting no detail that in any way furthers his purpose, describing not only the holy priest himself, but most of his relations and intimate friends, and freely inserting letters and documents at full length. Some of these, such as letters of commendation from royal personages, and other notabilities, and the official answers, which show that the "Circumlocution Office" was a French quite as much as an English institution, we could perhaps forego. But the letters of the abbé himself, numerous as they are, do not contain a line too many for our taste; for every line exhales the fragrance of a love the strength of which, as a natural affection, could seldom have been surpassed, and which, at the same time, although not so thoroughly predominated over by the supernatural as in the highest order of saints, is yet always under its influence, and ready to pass into it. Few men have ever lived less in or for themselves. He lived for his mother, brother, and sisters, for his nephews and nieces and adopted children, for his king and country, for his fellow-exiles, and, above all, for the poor, to whose special service he bound himself by repeated vows, which were gloriously fulfilled. We cannot see in his most confidential letters or in his most private memoranda a trace of indulgence in a single natural pleasure, except that of being loved. Although a very voluminous writer, he seems to have been absolutely free from literary vanity. He allowed the Abbé Gérard, the author of Valmont--to whom he submitted most of his productions--to go on criticising and correcting without mercy, and was ready to suppress anything at a word from him. {260} As he had no vulnerable point, so to speak, but in his affections, it was here, as is usual with those whom God would train for great things, that the sharpest wounds were inflicted. The early death of a younger sister born soon after himself, who had been his confidante and associate in piety and in all his schemes of devotion and devotedness as a child; the death of his mother, whom he would have idolized if he could have idolized anything, but from whose death-bed he went back calmly to sit all the evening in the confessional; the deaths of several others of those nearest and dearest to him, and the defection of a few; the overthrow of his gigantic and successful undertakings in behalf of the poor of his native town; two deportations and nearly half a life spent in banishment from his beloved France; banishment from Normandy and from home even after his return to France; frequent contact with distress greater than even _his_ wonderful ability to relieve; and, perhaps worst of all, his own share, however innocently, in the ruin of an intimate friend whom he had encouraged to invest all his property in his favorite undertaking of workshops at Rennes, and who died broken-hearted, leaving a widow and seven children destitute: these were the things that made his _way of the cross_, and moulded his loving and bleeding heart to a greater likeness of the Crucified.

It was on the 16th of September, 1792, that Abbé Carron, then in the thirty-third year of his age, and the tenth of his priesthood, landed in Jersey with 250 other priests, after a tempestuous passage of forty-eight hours from St. Malo, in which they had narrowly escaped the fate to which those who forced them to put to sea in a storm had apparently destined them. These were nearly the last of the exiles. The September massacres gave the crown of martyrdom to most of the clergy faithful to their vows, who had not either been alarmed into flight or forcibly banished. The Abbé Carron, and those who accompanied him, were not, properly speaking, _émigrés_ but _déportés_. Of the _émigrés_ or fugitives, again, there were two classes: those who, like most of the nobility, had fled when their property was seized and their privileges taken away; and those who, as was the case with most of the clergy, had remained at their posts till they were exposed to indignities and outrages, and their lives endangered. But nothing would induce the Abbé Carron and those who were influenced by his example to fly. The civil character of the clergy had been decreed by the National Assembly on the 12th of July, 1790, and unfortunately accepted by Louis XVI on the 24th of August. On the 4th of January, 1791, the oath which was the test of confessorship had been demanded of the bishops, and almost unanimously refused; and soon afterward began the persecution of the priests and the religious who followed their noble example. On the 11th of May the municipality of Rennes endeavored to install the schismatical clergy in the chief parishes of the town, and threatened summary proceedings against all who had refused the oath for any attempt to discharge their ministry any more. The Abbé Carron, the chief curate of the large parish of St. Germain, in which he had labored from the time of his ordination, was one of those specially interdicted. At the same time, the violent republicans of the town, who, although comparatively few--for the mass of the inhabitants continued Catholic and loyal--were prevailing, as elsewhere, over the more moderate, had begun to threaten his life. He preached the last course of Lent sermons that were heard for many years to come in his native town, although parties of armed men were known to be in wait for him; but after Easter, by order of the vicar-general, he retired to the house of a brother a few leagues out of the town. {261} On his way, early in the morning, he was met by forty armed men who had been searching for him at the very house to which he was going, with the intention of murdering him, and whose violence had so agitated his brother, who was in weak health, that he died not long after; but although they spoke to the abbé, they did not touch him. His life had been still more wonderfully preserved several years before, when three men--one of whom was enraged at the conversion by the abbé's preaching of a woman whom he had seduced--had laid a plot for his assassination, and had entrapped him, under pretence of his services being required for a wounded man, into a solitary house on the bank of the river. When he approached the bed in which his pretended penitent had laid himself ready to strike the murderous blow, he exclaimed, "You have sent for me too late: the unfortunate man is no more;" and his companions found that the wretch had suddenly expired. Carron had not yet finished his work; and, although in a less signally supernatural manner, the divine hand that had then fallen on his would-be murderer interposed again and again to protect him. From his retirement, where he had composed and published a vigorous and pathetic remonstrance to those religious who were yielding to the storm and breaking their vows, he returned to his perish, and did not intermit his work till he was seized and carried to prison, and into forced exile in the August of the next year. He continued to carry on and even to extend, in addition to his sacerdotal labors, the weaving, rope and sail-making, and other manufactures that he had established for the benefit of the poor, and was actually giving employment and subsistence to 1500 artisans when he was arrested. At the same time he had expended 100,000 francs on the buildings where the works were carried on; and when they were taken possession of by the republicans, the stock in hand was valued at more than 94,000 francs, and 90,000 more were due to him for sails supplied to the navy from his establishment. His success in this undertaking was probably the reason for which, although he was unflinching in his zeal, and resolutely refused to allow any constitutional priest to officiate in his church, his arrest was so long delayed. While inflexibly firm in matters of conscience, he was ready enough to accommodate himself in everything else to the new state of things, in order to carry on his work. He was willing to be known as _citoyen Carron_, and to be _tutoyed_ to any extent. He obeyed the law which ordered all the _imermentés_ to present themselves every day to the municipal authorities. He implored that, if they thought fit to imprison him, he might still be permitted to carry on his works of charity, and offered to visit them accompanied by an officer, and to live contentedly in confinement. "Although breathing infected air," he said, "I may still manage to live a few years, and discharge the sacred obligation of reimbursing the friends who lent me money to do good with. Then I will make a present of my establishment to my country, and I shall die satisfied with having undeceived those who think that I had in view to enrich myself or my family."

But the fatal blow, though delayed, was not very long in coming. On the 10th of August a party of the national guard took him to the _hôtel de ville_, and thence to the Abbey of St. Melaine, which had been turned into a prison; and on the 8th of September he and his fellow-prisoners were escorted to St. Malo to be shipped for Jersey. His bishop, his rector, and many of his clerical friends had fled months before; but he had kept to his resolution, more expressively, his biographer says, than grammatically worded, "_Jamais je n'ai voulu consentir à m'émigrer._" He was in bad health, and suffering besides from a violent toothache; but neither of this, nor of his being made to share the single mattress of a prisoner in a high fever, nor of any of the brutal insults which he received in prison and on the journey to the coast, does he say a word in the letters which he managed to send to his sister and nephews. {262} He addresses them all by name, longs to fold them to his breast, hopes one day to see them again, consoles and advises them, and sends the little ones the few sous that he happened to have in his possession. But his thoughts of his own sufferings are only such as these:

"Believe me, I do not suffer the hundredth part of what I have deserved.
An unfortunate sinner, a base and too frequent transgressor, such as I
know myself to be, ought not to think anything of such slight drops of
bitterness. My God, when we love you, how sweet, how consoling, how
delicious it is to suffer for you; and how magnificently does the love
which we bear you recompense us for all the miseries of life! Do not, my
dear child, think of your friend's imprisonment, without remembering at
the same time that I deserve to be at the bottom of the most loathsome
dungeon, and under a thousand chains, to bewail the sins of my youth."

His last message, when on the point of embarking, was to M. Paris, whom be had commissioned to watch over his factories.

"I hope that this letter, in which I enclose my heart, will find you in
good health. Mine has had some variations, but it is at present quite
sound; and I desire, if my God preserves me in it, to consecrate it again
one day entirely to the service of my dear fellow-citizens; for I shall
always love them, and shall always sigh for the moment when, recovering
from their unfounded prejudices, they cease to close their heart to me.
Speak of me now and then to the members of that dear colony whose
prosperity formed the sweetest enjoyment of my youth. Tell them that I
shall always be their father and their friend, and that I shall seek all
my life for the means of making them happy. If I can gain any practical
knowledge of manufactures in England, I shall make haste to apply it to
the improvement of La Piletière,"

He was never permitted to revisit his work at Rennes; but his indefatigable activity and burning zeal found a still wider field, and achieved still greater wonders in exile.

It was no slight task that awaited him. The two hundred and fifty penniless outcasts--of whom he was one--came to swell a crowd of more than three thousand priests and religious, living in discomfort and distress in the midst of a population far more bitterly opposed to the Catholic religion than the people of England, and in danger, from the want of occupation, and from the cessation of all outward practices of piety, of falling into disorder. Only the year before, a Catholic lady had tried to get permission to have mass celebrated in private, and the good people of Jersey had threatened to throw any priest who ventured to celebrate mass into a caldron of boiling oil; and when after some time she got a brave Irish priest to run the risk, her husband, who served his mass, held a naked sword to be ready for an attack. The Abbé Carron had not been long in the island before nine masses were said every morning in her parlor. After a short visit to London, whither he went to consult with the Bishop of Léon and the rector of his old parish at Rennes--not forgetting at the same time his promise to obtain information that would be useful at La Piletière--he settled himself to his work on the 8th of October. He opened an oratory at once, in which he said mass every day, and preached on Sunday, with some secrecy at first, but very soon, as the dispositions of the people changed, without the necessity of any precautions. He gave several courses of spiritual exercises to the clergy, by which their fervor was rekindled. He set on foot a large dispensary, in which a priest, who had been a surgeon before his ordination, made up and administered remedies, and in which another priest dispensed soup, wine, linen, and other necessaries. Then he collected a great quantity of books, and opened a library and reading-room, where the clergy could come from their over-crowded barrack-rooms to study or pray in silence and in comfort. He provided another collection of books to form a circulating library for the emigrant laity, many of whom had been hurried into exile without being able to bring anything with them; and Catholic books were, of course, unattainable at that time in Jersey. {263} By the June after his arrival he had two schools at work for their sons and daughters, and constituted himself master of the upper division of the boys' school, but taught the catechism and explained the epistles and gospels to all the classes in each institution. These were the only Catholic places of instruction in the whole island. He was, besides, the common refuge for all the wants, spiritual and temporal, of the whole colony; he was hard at work at the composition of some of the numerous volumes which he published to increase his resources of charity; and he continued, till war broke off the communication between England and France, to direct, as far as was possible, the factories of La Piletière. Yet, with all these undertakings on hand, he was living himself in a state of almost destitution. One room served him for a second chapel, for confessional, class-room, reception-room, and bedchamber; and having no servant, he had to move and replace the tables and benches, and sweep and dust several times a day. And, with all this multifarious work, he made it a rule to read two chapters of Holy Scripture on his knees every day, to make a visit every afternoon to the blessed sacrament, to make at least half an hour's mental prayer, and to read a chapter in the Imitation, another in the Spiritual Combat, and at least fifteen pages of a manual of theology, however pressing his occupations might be. He prescribed to himself in a rule of life, drawn up in Jersey, and found after his death, to rise at four, however late he might have retired to rest; to say office after his meditation, and then to celebrate; to fast every day, never taking anything before dinner, and only milk for his collation, and on Fridays only bread; never to touch wine, and to confine himself to bread and vegetables when be dined alone; and in various other ways to deprive himself of comfort, and to bring his standard of what was necessary far below that which is usual even with the pious and charitable. The only expensive article that he retained was a watch, the alarum of which he found needful to wake him; but be promised, as soon as be had thoroughly acquired the habit of waking before four o'clock, to give this also away to his "dear friends the poor; who," he said, "shall have everything that I can deny myself." His rule of life, which contains also devout aspirations for every different act of the day, and for times of wakefulness at night, ends with this fervent petition:

"O incomprehensible and eternal treasure of my soul, the one adorable
object of all the feelings, affections, and emotions of my heart, Jesus,
my Jesus, my love and my all, oh! that I may love you, that I may live
only to love you, and to cause you to be loved upon earth! Grant me, O
Lord! days well filled, a pure life, and a happy death, that may conduct
me to your bosom!"

That such a man should exercise great influence for good, and work wonders, we cease to be surprised. When his undertakings assumed soon afterward a still more extended range of responsibility in London, Bishop Douglas expressed to the Bishop of Léon his amazement and alarm, and was answered: "Reassure yourself, my lord; I have known Abbé Carron a long time, and I am accustomed to see him work miracles." Yet we should hardly, perhaps, be prepared for what he actually effected. When the republican forces under General Hoche were massed on the coast, apparently for an invasion of our territories, the English government resolved to fortify Jersey, and deemed it expedient to transfer the exiles to London. A curious proposal had just been made by the military commander, that the clergy should take up arms; which was, however, courteously refused, and the refusal courteously accepted. In August, 1796, the abbé came to London, charged with the task of finding accommodation and providing for the wants of the French colony from Jersey. {264} Besides the herculean task of finding lodgings for most of them, he at once hired two houses in Tottenham-court road and reopened his two schools, and soon after opened two rooms for public chapels, and established again his libraries. In less than three years he had also under his care a hospital for forty aged and infirm ecclesiastics, and another for twenty-five female patients, an ecclesiastical seminary containing twenty-five students in training for the priesthood, and a Maison de Providence, on the plan of the houses of the Sisters of Charity, provided with all necessary supplies for visiting and relieving the poor. In 1799, to his two day-schools were added _pensionnats_--the one for eighty boys, and the other for sixty girls--all the expenses of which, in excess of the twelve or eighteen guineas per head granted by the British government, fell on the abbé. His way of returning thanks was to promise some additional work of charity. Thus, in an effusion of gratitude for the opening of the hospice for old priests, he bound himself to give a dinner to six poor old men every 28th of October; when the seminary was opened, he promised to give a dinner every 1st of December to twelve poor children, to wait on them himself, and to send them home with new clothes and bread in their hands; and when the female hospital was opened, to give a marriage portion every 25th of October to three virtuous young women.

When in peculiarly great difficulties, his plan, like that of many saints, was to give in alms any little money that remained, in order, as he said, "to draw down dew from heaven;" and this never failed. Rich Protestants called and left bank-notes, without giving him time to discover who they were, or sent anonymous donations. Two gentlemen in drab-colored attire astonished the pupils, trained to the most exquisite politeness, by coming in one day without removing their hats; and one of them, who turned out to be that torment of our infancy, Lindsey Murray, after seeing the whole establishment, deposited £10 in the abbé's hands. The leading Catholics were, of course, profuse in their offerings, and all ready to place themselves at his disposal. The hoarded jewels of the richer exiles melted into alms for the poor. Actors read plays for his benefit, and the great Catalani gave a concert for him. He had been encouraged at the outset by even more striking dispositions of Divine Providence. A rich Englishman, living at St. Aubin in Jersey, had entreated him to accept his house and estate and become his heir; but, as the offer involved the condition of being naturalized and abandoning France, his love for his country, that had used him so cruelly, prevented his listening to it. Soon after his settlement in London he found himself without resources, and heavily in debt. Mr. Desprez, his former rector, met him coming out of his oratory in a state of great depression, and proposed a walk in the park. It was early, and no one was to be seen. A man passed them at a rapid pace, and, when a little in advance of them, drew some packages out of his pocket, one of which fell to the ground. The abbé picked it up, and found a bundle of notes. He ran after the man, shouting to him, but in vain, to stop, and at last overtook him. The other refused to stop, and declared that the notes did not belong to him, and that he was in a great hurry. "Where do they come from, then?" was the natural question. "From there, sir," said the stranger, pointing upward. They amounted, Mr. Desprez recorded, to the value of some scores of thousands of francs. The abbé used to say that, while in England, more than a million guineas had passed through his hands. Yet he was inexorable in his rule of never receiving anything of value for himself. He refused whatever was clogged with the condition of keeping it himself.

In 1797, an amnesty for the exiles was voted, and for a week he was hoping to return to France, and had even closed his schools; but the government, who were better acquainted with the state of things, refused him a passport, and the _coup d'état_ of the 4th of September revoked the amnesty. {265} In November, 1799, he settled with all his establishments, except the seminary for priests, which was now not so much required, at Somers-town. They occupied ten large houses, the rent of three being paid by the government, and that of the others by himself. A French journal describes them as situated outside of London, in good air, and _quite in the country_.