Chapter X (1)

Solitude was the cradle of creation; solitude is the never-ceasing fountain wherein exhausted souls are refreshed. Not without an object did the prophets begin their mission in the desert. Who would leave after him an immortal name must retire from the haunts of men, and in solitude examine his soul ere he speaks to mankind from the rostrum, or with the pen, the chisel, or the pencil. When the busy hum of the world has faded away into silence, when he hears no voice but that of his heart within, and nature without, and God above, he will then feel the flame which brings immortality. The voice he hears will be that of truth; the hand which stretches toward him that of justice; and all the strength of the one and the charms of the other will glow in his work.

Master Sebald's dungeon was the most real, the most complete of solitudes. Thick walls of gray granite, upon which shone green and slimy traces of the dampness that filled the air, formed a circle around him without an angle, a recess, an irregularity on which the weary eye might rest. {682} A plank and a truss of straw were his bed; a block of stone was his only seat; there was no door, for such was old Sebald's wish. Light alone--sweet light--was not denied the captive, but flowed abundant and golden through a large opening in the vaulted roof. But by day only was the boon granted, and then it bore with it no sight of that world where men dwelt, no view of the sunlit waters, the green fields, or the feathered children of the air. Nothing of these could he enjoy; nothing but that flood of day flowing from the open heaven upon the criminal's brow, like the gaze of Eternal Love, ever open to hearts that yearn for it; and nevertheless, when Master Sebald thus found himself immured in a living tomb, when nothing of earth remained to him save stone walls, his modelling clay, and his chisel, then inspiration of a greater power than it had ever before felt filled his soul, and in that inspiration and in his work he would have found joyful companions; he would have been happy, were it not that two dark and vengeful guests found lodgment in his breast, sorrow and remorse.

His remorse was for his crime, his sorrow for his child. They wore deeper the furrows in his brow; they made his hair whiter, his step more feeble and uncertain; they sunk his eyes deeper in their sockets. They tortured him in his weary watchings; they gave form to his dreams and broke and almost banished slumber; they stood before him when he worked or prayed--his former hate and his former love; his victim and his child. The golden hair of his Mina glittered in wild waves before his eyes; he saw the manly face of Otho pale and contracted with agony, while the gushing blood poured from his wound; he closed his eyes, but still their forms stood before him, both beckoning to the threshold of that world where eternity begins.

The old master commenced his work, ever surrounded by these sad companions. Ever hearing the last murmurs of Otho, the last sighs of Mina, he carved the holy cross and the summit of Calvary; then the shameful scroll; then the sacred form. Ever haunted by his visions of the dead, he knew better to give to the divine Crucified the writhing of living agony joined to the beginning rigidity of death; he remembered the last quivering of human strength and the mysterious folds of the winding-sheet. It was only when he came to carve the face of Christ that imagination and memory ceased to furnish him a model. Mina's passionate grief and pious resignation; the mingled humiliation, repentance, grief, and rage of the murdered Otho could give naught to be reproduced in the countenance of a God. He must seek his model elsewhere; and Master Sebald had not asked for his mirror in vain.

Standing erect before his work, he began to chisel the face of Christ; and for the first time since his prison walls closed upon him he gazed upon his own reflection. The long gaze upon his white head and his grief-worn features satisfied him.

His own face was a book, a book of sorrows speaking most eloquently, wherein all bitterness, all failings, all regrets, and all terrors, the dreams of the artist, the humiliation of the master, the friend betrayed, the sufferings, of the father, the anguish of the condemned, had inscribed their memories and left their foot-prints. The agony of Master Sebald was already long, and had been cruel and stormy. Ah! the remembrances of Otho's treachery were as the wounds in the hands and feet; the brand of dishonor upon his brow was as the crown of thorns; and the last wound, the stab of the lance, was the loss of Mina. So, that after long contemplating his own features, the old sculptor knelt humbly before the work he had begun.

"Pardon, O Christ!" he said, "if I, a weak mortal, an unworthy and sinful man, dare, in carving thy sacred lineaments, trace mine. But I design not, O Lord! to show thee happy and full of peace, or radiant and glorious. {683} I promised to present thee suffering, suffering even the death of the cross; I suffer that of the gibbet. A friend betrayed thee; a friend betrayed me. Thou wast loaded with insult and ignominy; I too had good cause to blush before my judges. Thou weepest over the sins of men, thy children; I over my child's grave. And as, O Lord! thou wert man as well as God, I may not offend thee in copying the anguish, the griefs, the sufferings that have left their print upon my brow. All these thou knowest, O Lord! but remorse thou couldst not know. That will I keep to myself, and in its stead I will place radiance, hope, and splendor of divinity. Ay, hope! for even on the cross didst thou hope and call upon thy Father!"

Here the old sculptor ceased, and bent before his work, while the shadows of despair darkened his brow. Then he cast a troubled look upon the statue, a look in which anguish mingled with prayer, confidence with terror.

"And can I hope?" he murmured. "Mina is in heaven. Shall I again see her?"

But no voice replied, and, sighing, he stood again erect. Then after a few moments of silent meditation he seized his chisel, and, making the sign of the cross, recommenced his work, and the stone seemed to breathe, to quiver, to palpitate as, one by one, the suffering lines came forth. Truly in Master Sebald's mirror were grief and unpitying and unending pain.

And he worked in spite of the gnawings of hunger, the want of sleep, the cold of the winter. He had ever within him strength and fire--the strength of expiation, the fire of penitence. But as he worked, his form became more stooped, and his eye less sure; his blood flowed feebler through his veins, and his breath grew more quick and gasping. But he needed but mind and hand, and his mind was clear, and his hand carved bravely still. And what cared he for the failing of an exhausted body? If, day by day, his face grew thinner, his eyes cavernous, his lips tighter, was not his model for all that the more real? Was it not a dying Christ he was carving?

At last his work was done. When the last blow of the chisel had been given, when the stone had received the final touch, when Christ hung there wounded, quivering, breathing, sublime, Master Sebald knelt before his work and bowed his forehead to the earth. The sculptor demanded his pay; the criminal his pardon. He prayed fervently and long; and when he rose, he knew that his child called, and that the hour of his deliverance was nigh, and, walking to the narrow opening which formed his only means of communication with men, he called aloud to his jailer:

"My Christ is finished! My task is done! Unseal the door and lead me to the executioner."

But it was not the executioner that came, but the judge; and he, the first to enter the dungeon, when he lifted his eyes, fell upon his knees with clasped hands; for what he saw seemed no image of stone, but a living Christ, suffering and dying before him. Struck with astonishment and admiration, he called his colleagues and sent for monseigneur the bishop, and his highness the margrave, that all might see the Christ of the condemned. The dungeon of Master Sebald was too narrow for the multitude of visitors who crowded before the holy image; they talked of carrying it to one of the courts of the city, or to the Grand Place, that all the faithful might mourn and be edified by so sacred a spectacle. But Master Sebald opposed this project and asked a further boon:

"Ah!" cried he, "if you think this work of my hands merits aught but favor, consecrate it to a holy remembrance; place it in the cemetery where my daughter reposes. Christ should be upon her tomb, to speak to her of hope, and on the tomb of him--of--_him_ too, to speak to him of forgiveness."

{684}

We may add that the sculptor's request was quickly granted, for in those happy days there were sheriffs who believed, and judges of tender hearts. They were very backward, and very far behind our enlightened age in those days, although gunpowder had just been invented. Besides, the councillors of the margrave held sacred things in respect, and did not regard cemeteries as mere charnel-houses.

They carried, then, with great pomp, Master Sebald's statue to the cemetery; and, for the first time since his imprisonment began, the old man saw the crowd of men, the green leaves, the tomb of his daughter, and the white clouds of heaven.

He saw the blessing of the cross; he saw Mina's tomb consecrated; and then, taking his chisel, he graved upon the pedestal, as a last farewell, the inscription which, as we have seen, yet remains, and asked the time appointed for his execution. But murmurs arose in the crowd which soon swelled to violent clamors. Could so repentant a man, so old and true an artist, be given over to the gibbet! The people surrounded the magistrates; the magistrates turned to the councillors; the councillors turned to the margrave; and after a short deliberation the president of the tribunal declared to Master Koerner that, in consideration of his genius, of his piety, and of his repentance, he should still live; pardon was granted him.

"Is life a boon?" murmured the old artist, sadly bowing his head. "But I await the mercy of God. He is more generous than man."

He had not long to wait, for two days after, in the gray, early morning, they found him cold and dead upon his daughter's grave, his head resting upon the base of the crucifix. His hopes were realized; God opened his prison-doors.

......

Such is the legend of the sculptor and his work--a legend which offers a simple and characteristic picture of the ages of confiding faith, when the Christian placed his hopes, the injured his vengeance, the criminal his repentance, and the artist his genius, at the foot of the cross.

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Original.

The Indissolubility Of Christian Marriage.

Number Two.

It is evident that Jesus Christ intended to legislate and did legislate in regard to marriage. The commandment which he gave, requiring the marriage contract to be respected as inviolable and indissoluble, is a law, has the force of a law, and is obligatory, not only upon ecclesiastical, but also upon civil legislators and judges. There is no power upon earth, either in the church or in the state, which has power to abrogate or change it. We do not pretend that this law was promulgated to the Jewish people, or to pagan nations, directly and immediately. Our Lord legislated immediately only for those who should become the subjects of his kingdom by baptism. For all others, he legislated only mediately, by promulgating to all mankind the precept to embrace his faith and be baptized into his church, and thus to bring themselves under the entire code of Christian law. The unbaptized are subject to the natural law only in regard to marriage, as in everything else; and their marriage is not a sacrament, but a merely natural contract. {685} What we maintain is, that the law regarding _Christian_ marriage has been established by the sovereign authority of Jesus Christ for all the baptized, and that this law respects the very essence of marriage as a contract, invalidating all pretended marriages which are not in accordance with it. All ecclesiastical legislators are, therefore, bound to legislate in conformity with this law. They must treat all marriages sanctioned and ratified by the law of Christ as valid and binding, and all others as null and void. All Christians must act in the same manner. And in Christian states, as all law-givers and judges are bound to act according to their conscience, and in conformity with the divine law, and as the revealed law of Jesus Christ respecting marriages is the supreme rule of the Christian conscience, having the force of a divine law, they are bound to make it the rule of all their enactments and judgments.

Some Protestant writers deny that our Lord intended to legislate respecting matrimony, and affirm that he merely laid down a rule of morality. This is, however, an unmeaning statement. He could not give a moral precept respecting matrimony without legislating. The essential morality of the question is determined by the law determining the conditions, motives, and obligations of the contract. Morality consists in conformity to this law, immorality in violating it. Our Lord could not, therefore, command anything as required by morality, or forbid anything as immoral, in relation to the essentials of marriage, without reenacting an already existing law, or promulgating a new law, defining the conditions by which a marriage is rendered a valid or an invalid contract.

The very circumstances and terms of his utterance on the subject show that he did legislate. Moses legislated on the subject, and permitted to men divorce in certain cases, with the privilege of remarriage to both parties. Our Lord expressly revokes this permission, so far as his own disciples are concerned, and declares that, according to the Christian law, whoever divorces his wife and marries another, or whoever marries a divorced party, must be held guilty of adultery. This is an act of legislation, for it is a law declaring null and void for the future certain marriages which, under the Mosaic law, were valid. Now, there is no civil law which can make a contract declared invalid by the divine law valid, binding, or lawful, or which can invalidate a contract made valid by the divine law. It is true that our Lord did not enact any civil law, properly so called, with civil penalties annexed to it, for the Jewish people, or for any Gentile nation. But he prescribed the standard according to which all legislators in Christian states are bound to make their civil laws.

The question now comes up, How are we to ascertain what the law of Jesus Christ is, and what is the law itself? We have discussed the last question in part, in our former number, in which we endeavored to show that the texts of Scripture in which we are informed concerning the precept given by Christ concerning marriage, properly understood, sustain the Catholic doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage. We have now to show how the Catholic doctrine and the law of the Catholic Church are established with an infallible certainty, and with a force absolutely obligatory on the conscience.

It is evident enough that the notion of legislators and judges attempting to discuss and decide upon the true meaning of texts of Scripture is absurd. Such a proceeding would never lead to any uniformity of legislation if attempted, and it would never be attempted in any community where principles of sound jurisprudence prevailed. Who, then, are to decide upon the meaning of these texts, if the ultimate appeal is to them? The Protestant clergy? They cannot agree among themselves. {686} Even in the earliest and best days of Puritanism in New England, when a comparatively strict doctrine and legislation respecting marriage prevailed, there was a serious difference among the clergy respecting the lawful grounds of divorce. Moreover, the Protestant clergy do not claim the right of interpreting the Scripture. The laity have an equal right, and each individual has it for himself. Rationalists claim also the right of making reason the criterion of the truth of the doctrine of Scripture and the teachings of Jesus Christ. It is therefore plain that it is a futile proceeding to attempt to make the text of Scripture a standard of legislation or public sentiment in regard to marriage. The result which has actually been produced is an inevitable result, namely, that the prevalent opinion and sentiment in the community, based on their common sense, will regulate legislation in regard to marriage and divorce. This common sense is not an enlightened and elevated common sense, proceeding from sound, rational, and moral principles. It is a low, irrational sense, derived from passion, self-interest, expediency, and a perverted reason, which tends continually to degenerate more and more, and whose logical consequences may be seen developing themselves every day under our own eyes.

The law established by Jesus Christ is not and cannot be based upon the texts of the sacred historians who inform us of the fact that he did promulgate such a law. These texts are not the law, and the enacting force does not proceed from them. They may be cited in proof of the fact that the law was made, and in proof of what the law was. The law itself was verbally proclaimed by our Lord, and its force dates from and depends upon that verbal enactment. The historical account given by the evangelists added nothing to it, and the comments of the apostles upon it are mere allusions to it, or exhortations to keep it, which presuppose its existence. It was a part of the unwritten law of the church handed down by tradition, whose legitimate expositors were the apostles and their successors. Our Lord must have instructed the apostles fully on the subject, and they must have transmitted full and explicit instructions on the same subject to the bishops and clergy to whom the government of the church was committed. As occasion required, the unwritten Christian common law was embodied in canons by episcopal councils, and thus became statute law. The true method of fixing decisively the real scope and contents of the divine legislation of our Lord is, therefore, to investigate the legislation of the church from the earliest times.

The doctrine defined by the Council of Trent upon which the modern canonical law of the Catholic Church is based, is too well known to need any statement. It is evident that this definition was no innovation, but merely a solemn declaration of the doctrine universally received in the Catholic Church, levelled against the innovations of Protestants. The mere fact that the indissolubility of marriage has been recognised in the Catholic Church and enforced under the severest penalties, and that it has been also recognised and protected by the civil law of Europe, until Protestantism brought in a disastrous change, is sufficient to prove that the church received her law from Jesus Christ or the apostles. So severe a law, one so inconvenient to individuals, one so contrary to the established legislation of both Jews and Gentiles, could never have been established and enforced by any other than a divine authority, and in the origin of the Christian community. If a milder law had ever prevailed in the church, an attempt to establish a stricter one would have met a violent opposition. History would record the struggle, the pages of the fathers would bear witness to the difference of opinion and the mutual discussion of the question by the opposing parties. Councils would have been called to decide it, and, if any change had been generally enforced in favor of a stricter law, either it would have been based on reasons supposed to justify or require the abrogation of an indulgence formerly granted, or, if not, the previous existence of this indulgence would have been denounced as a corruption, and these who maintained it would have been condemned. {687} The quiet, undisturbed continuity of the tradition and practice of the church from the earliest ages proves that no serious and widespread difference of doctrine ever arose, but that the modern Catholic doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage held undisputed sway from the beginning. The opponents of this doctrine cannot pretend to establish any clear tradition in their own favor. They can only endeavor to obscure the evidence of the tradition sanctioning the Catholic doctrine. Notwithstanding their efforts, the chain of evidence from St. Augustine back to Origen, Justin Martyr, and Hermas, including all the canons which still remain, and which were enacted by ecclesiastical councils, is unbroken and conclusive, as may be seen by consulting those Catholic authors who have written scientific treatises on the subject. The whole discussion is, however, of little practical value, except as showing the necessity of the infallibility of the church in defining doctrine and her supreme authority in judging moral questions, and as corroborating the proof that she possesses this infallible and supreme authority. The real question at issue is, whether marriage is a sacrament confided to the guardianship of the church, and regulated by a law of which the church is the supreme judge, or whether it is a natural contract under the control of the civil law. The Protestant world has taken the latter side of the alternative. Consequently, the case of marriage comes to this issue; what civil laws respecting marriage and divorce are best calculated to promote happiness, morality, social and civil prosperity and well-being? Legislatures and courts must decide the question, while churches, clergymen, moralists, writers, etc., can exercise no other influence than that of argument and persuasion. These arguments must be drawn from reason and the natural law. They must bear upon the point that the strength and perpetuity of the marriage bond is useful and necessary for the preservation of society. The doctrine of Scripture and the authority of religion can only be brought in to increase the motives and sanctions of the natural law.

It is useless to hope that the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage will ever be adopted either in theory or practice as the result of reasoning on the principles of either the natural law or the moral code of Christianity, by those who reject the infallibility of the Catholic Church. It is also useless to hope that the Protestant clergy and jurists will ever agree together as to the proper ground of divorce, and the proper safeguards of marriage, much less that they will agree in adopting the opinions of the most rigorous school among them, as sustained by their able and learned advocate, President Woolsey, in The New-Englander. The only thing in the power of the Protestant clergy and their lay coadjutors is, to diminish and retard the destructive tendency of the false principle they have admitted into theology and legislation by their denial of the Catholic doctrine regarding marriage. In this direction they may do something, and it is to be desired that they should exert themselves to the utmost to do all they can. The clergy may exert a certain moral and religious influence by acting according to some fixed principles and laws in regard to performing the marriage ceremony and admitting or excluding persons from communion. Also by preaching and writing on the obligations of marriage, the blessings which flow from unions which are hallowed by perfect and lifelong fidelity to conjugal and parental duties, and the evils which are the consequence of infidelity and frequent separations. Jurists and statesmen may reform the administration of law in the courts so as to decrease the facility of obtaining divorce, and secure to all parties a thorough protection of all the rights guaranteed to them by the civil law. {688} Physicians and others may do good by pointing out the physical and social evils which flow from the violation of those laws on which the multiplication and healthy development of the race depend. So far as individuals are induced to marry in accordance with the dictates of pure affection and enlightened prudence, to observe the moral laws of the married state, and to remain faithful to each other until death, and so far as divorces and re-marriages are rendered less numerous, so far good will be done, and the well-being of society promoted. We desire most heartily that the utmost possible success may attend these well-meant efforts. Nevertheless, we cannot flatter our Protestant friends with any expression of our own conviction that this success will be anything more than placing a breakwater in the way of the current that is sweeping away the Christian institution of marriage. The principles and institutions which make society Christian, the traditions which connect it with the past and give it Christian and moral vitality, have been received and retained from the Catholic Church. As these are gradually abandoned and lost, society possesses no power to recover and restore them. Christian societies outside the church, and states composed of persons who are nominally Christian but out of Catholic communion, bear within them the principle of dissolution, without possessing any sufficient principle of recuperation. The Catholic Church alone possesses a divine law given by revelation which she is competent to explain and authorised to enforce, and which is a principle of perpetual life, capable of resisting every tendency to disease and death, and of renewing every decayed national constitution, restoring every degenerate people, and continually repeating the work wrought in the first formation of Christendom. Protestantism is a tubercular deposit in the centre of the bosom of society. Its necessary result is spiritual, moral, intellectual, and finally, physical death. As in the case of a person smitten with tuberculosis, there may be for a long time many portions of the lungs unaffected, much health and strength in the organs and limbs of the body, and an increase of cerebral excitement and activity, although the principle of death which will finally stop all vital activity is slowly and surely gaining upon the principle of life; so with those portions of Christendom which are smitten with heresy. There is much health and vigor remaining as the effect of the original state of sound, integral, Catholic life. Many individuals remain essentially sound in their belief and upright in their practice. There is even a flush on the surface of society, a hectic brilliancy in the eye of intellect, a fevered activity of thought and action, which is mistaken for genuine, healthful vigor and vitality. The boastful, shallow organs of public sentiment, whose real doctrines are infidel, but who are forced to wear a little smear of popular religion on their face, pretend, with an assurance equally sickening and ridiculous, to read lectures and give advice to the Vicar of Christ and the bishops of the Catholic Church on great moral and social questions. Their changes are rung with monotonous and unmeaning repetition upon railroads, telegraphs, steam, newspapers, heavy guns, and progress. The Catholic Church is denounced as the great obstacle in the way of modern society, because she adheres to the steadfast, unchanging affirmation of eternal principles of truth, law, and justice. Her complete spoliation is urged as the great means of hastening the march of society toward its goal. It is vain to expect an argument which has any solidity, or even the pretence of an answer which is grave and serious, to the reasonings and expostulations of those who point out the deadly symptoms which are concealed beneath this hectic activity and betrayed by this boastful demeanor. An ill-bred sneer, an unmeaning platitude, or a frivolous display of rhetoric is all that can be expected. {689} Nevertheless, those who are able to think, and who have some real solicitude for progress in truth, in sound morality, in Christian virtue, in solid well-being and happiness, on the part of society and their fellow-men, will not be able to shut their eyes to the evident symptoms which prove that a deadly disease, already far advanced, is feeding on the vitals of the social organism. These symptoms have been pointed out by Protestant clergymen and medical writers, and we refer to their startling statements as evidence of the virulence and extent of the moral ulcer which is eating up the vitals of society and destroying the original, American population of the country. It is not the matter of a few divorces granted to married persons whose rights are judicially proved to have been violated in a flagrant manner, which is of such great importance. While the ancient laws of the states were rigidly enforced, and the number of divorces granted was small, the community received no grievous injury. The great evil which is so alarming, and is working such deplorable effects, consists in the great number of divorces granted, the facility with which they are obtained, and the flippant, shameless disregard of all judicial decorum by the courts of law. Behind all this is another evil, the violation of the morality of the conjugal state. The authors of Protestantism have opened the door to all these disorders by their denial of the indissolubility and sacramental character of matrimony, and their concession of the right to judge and decide upon the whole subject of the marriage contract to the civil power. The door which they have opened they cannot close. There is no protection for the sacredness of marriage at all adequate to the necessities of the case, except in a doctrine, a law, and a system of practical morality, promulgated and enforced by a church which has power over the conscience, and is acknowledged as possessing an authority delegated by Jesus Christ. The utter weakness and helplessness of Protestantism, and the absolute necessity of a return to the Catholic Church in order to save society and civilization, has been manifested in England and the United States in a more startling and sudden manner than could have been anticipated twenty years ago by the most sagacious prophet of the future. We wait with interest and anxiety to see what will be done by those who believe that the secession of the sixteenth century was really a reformation, and that the salvation of the human race is to be looked for from the principles of Luther and Calvin. At present, these principles appear to be tending to the abrogation of the institution of marriage in the Christian sense of the word, and the introduction of a species of polygamy worse than that of Mormonism.

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{690}

Original.

Mea Culpa.

By Richard Storrs Willis.

I.

All through my fault, my own most grievous fault!
This the chagrin and inward smart of sin.
Nor others' blame can my poor cause exalt--
Naught but myself t' accuse, without, within!
And thus to my God heavy-hearted I cry,
_Mea culpa, meet maxima culpa!_
And thus to the mother of Jesus I sigh,
_Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!_

II.

O God! the past, the wicked past forgive!
The spectre-sins that haunt my soul dispel.
Deeper than mirth, alas! they frowning live;
Beneath my smiles, in memory's caves they dwell!
And thus to Saint Michael, archangel, I plead,
_Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa:_
And thus to Saint John with regret I concede,
_Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!_

III.

_Ponder my love_--a Saviour's voice would fall,
When tempted sore, in youth's delirious hour.
_Ponder my love_--O kind and gracious call!
And yet from life I plucked each poison-flower!
And thus to Saint Peter and Paul I exclaim,
_Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa:_
And thus to all saints and you, brothers, proclaim,
_Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!_

IV.

Ah! well, dear Lord, here in my guilt I bow.
What else to do, where else to go, than home?
Joyless, distrest, a contrite suppliant now,
Heartsick of sin, homesick for thee, I come!
Ye saints and you, brothers, to Christ for me pray
_Peccavi, mea maxima culpa!_
Alas! my dear Jesus, 'tis all I can say,
_Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!_

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{691}

From The Dublin University Magazine.

Solutions of Some Parisian Problems.

Cabs And Their Patron.

The admirers of French novels have made acquaintance with some of the French representatives of our own carboys and carmen in the French metropolis. They are aware that their cabs or cabriolets are called _Fiacres_, and they are naturally desirous to know why they should be called by a name which by a little aspiration sounds unmistakably Irish. This trifling question has set some archaeological antiquaries by the ears. The following appears to be the genuine solution: Sanval, author of "Recherches sur les Antiquités de Paris," (end of seventeenth century.) said that, about forty years previous, a certain Nicholas Sauvage, agent to the proprietor of the Amiens coaches, and owner of a large house in the Rue Saint Martin, the front of which was adorned with the _enseigne_ of Saint Fiacre, kept from forty to fifty horses in his stables, and also cabs for the convenience of the public at rather a dear figure. His establishment became so noted that all coaches for hire came to be called Fiacres.

Menage, in his "Origines de la Langue Françoise," 1684, gave a like account, but described the effigies of St. Fiacre as adorning the front of a house in Rue Saint Antoine.

Both writers appear to have been in error. A satiric Mazarinade dating 1652, and bearing for title the "Royal Supper of Pontoise," etc., has the following lines descriptive of the embarrassment of the worshipful supper-eaters when they wished to return home at a late hour to Paris:

"C'était pour avoir des Carrosses,
Ou l'on attelle Chevaux rosses,
Dont les cuirs tout rappetassés,
Vilains, crasseux, et mal passés,
Représentoient le simulacre,
De l'ancienne Voiture à Fiacre
Qui fut le premier du métier,
Qui louoit carosse au Quartier
De Monsieur de Saint Thomas à Louvre."
[Footnote 241]

[Footnote 241:
It (the embarrassment) was to provide cabs
To which they yoke poor hack horses,
Whose leathers all shrunken,
Ugly, greasy, and badly dressed,
Represent the ghost
Of the old cab belonging to Fiacre,
Who was the first of the trade,
That hired out carriages at the Quarter
Of Monsieur St. Thomas of the Louvre.]

Fiacre may have prospered in his business, and unprincipled rivals have carried out his idea, and adopted the effigies of the saint after whom the poor cabman was called. Thus Sanval may have seen the pictured saint presiding over the useful articles (originally let out at three sous the drive) in Rue Saint Martin, and Menage may have seen a rival, Rue Saint Antoine. It is more likely that the plagiarists appropriated for their vehicles the name of the saint than that of the humble individual, the inventor of the system.

Saint Fiachra was of that noble band of Irish missionaries who spread themselves over the Continent soon after the island was converted. St. Virgil became patron of Saltzburg, St. Killian of Franconia, St. Gall of Switzerland, St. Columbanus of the Vosges and of Bobbio in Italy. St. Fiachra was gladly welcomed by the bishop of Meaux in the seventh century, and devoted his services to the care of an hospital. The cabriolet drivers and (if we remember aright) the market gardeners of Paris honor him as their patron.

Mysteries Of The Rue D'Arbre ?ec. [Illegible]

No visitor will fail to visit the church of St. Germain d'Auxerrois, the parish church, as it may be called, of the inmates of the Tuileries, and within a few stones' throw of that luxurious but not very comfortable residence. {692} The possession of the most finely furnished apartments will not give much pleasure to the dweller who is uncertain whether he may not be ejected from them to-morrow. The triple portal of the church dates from the middle of the thirteenth century, and the low steeple from a much earlier period. Owing to the late demolitions, the exterior of the church can now be examined with more convenience and pleasure than of yore, and many a saunterer will be surprised to see, arranged along the frieze of a lateral chapel projecting into the Rue d'Arbre Sec, various portions of a carp, separated from one another by roses, (architectural, to wit,) here a head, there a body, and then (a rose intervening) a tail. As far as the information got from passers-by extends, he must remain in ignorance of the cause of the strange ornamentation, but he may learn it here at second-hand, our authority being the archaeologist M. Didron. An individual inhabitant of the adjoining street (perhaps a fish-monger) had got permission to add this chapel to the old edifice; and to connect his name (_Tronçon_, a piece cut away) with the building, he devised this ingenious plan.

Another pious and equally ingenious dweller in the same street, who dealt in poultry, did so well in business that she built a new house at the corner, and in front erected a pious monument. Her name being Anne, she got a sculptor to execute a group for her, namely, St. Anne, mother of the Blessed Virgin, teaching her daughter to read. Having thus secured her name from oblivion, she got her occupation transmitted to after-times by having various fowl sculptured in bas-relief on the plinth. Alas! how are casual visitors to know, when admiring the group, that it was executed at the expense of Anne the poulterer of the street of the withered tree; and who is aware of the circumstance from which the street itself got its name in old times?

In days when pilgrimages were in fashion, a certain house of entertainment in that street was much in favor with the really devout, as well as the wanderers who had returned in life from the Holy Land. These had brought home intelligence of a wonderful tree which had annually produced leaves and fruit in the vicinity of Hebron, from the days of Adam to that on which our Lord was crucified. [Footnote 242] On that day it withered, and, according to the assertion of the pilgrims, would remain sapless till the Holy City would be in the possession of a Christian power. Such a legend was calculated to make a deep impression on the customers of the auberge, for which an open-air artist was soon called on to execute the effigies of the famous dry tree for a sign. Afterward the inn communicated its name to the street.

[Footnote 242: Near Hebron is an oak of great dimensions and of great
age; but the acorn from which it sprung was not planted for ages after
Abraham's time.]

Slang Banished From The Stage.

Some objectionable things, which, when they assume troublesome proportions, are extinguished by public opinion amongst ourselves, are stifled by the strong hand of power in France. In 1859, a warning was given to those theatres in Paris which were suspected of a leaning to _Argot_, (slang,) that they should for the future accept no piece in which it prevailed. So the poor gamins, who enjoy a play from the _Paradis_ of the theatre, could no more relish the phraseology of their peculiar world and their peculiar philosophy. The higher powers argued thus: "Argot is the ordinary communication between formats of all descriptions, whether they plot against the peace and well-being of society, or bewail their misfortunes at the bagne; _ergo_, it is not a fit and proper dialect to be spoken before gentlemen and ladies, honest citizens and their wives and children; _ergo_, it must not be spoken." So the poor gamin of vicious propensities must be content in his hours of relaxation to learn the language of that half of the world to which he does not belong.

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Yet many of his pet words are not of a low or disreputable origin. Such is the word _Binette_, nowhere heard now except among the folk who live by their wits, and yet presenting a noble and sublime image in the days of the Grand Monarque, in fact, no less an object than his flowing and majestic peruke. Binette of the Rue des Petits Champs (street of the little fields) was his majesty's hair-dresser, and a great man would feel his dignity outraged if a hint was given that his wig was not _confectioned_ by the great Binette. Now from Caesar to the wisp that stops a bung-hole, the descent is not greater than between the Binette (the wig, not the man) of the seventeenth and that of the nineteenth century.

In thieves' Latin _ardent_ represents a candle. The thief has accurately preserved the vocabulary of the Hotel Rambouillet, the Holland House of the seventeenth century. One of the _Precieuses_ of that temple of literary elegance, when directing the lackey to snuff the candle, would thus express herself: "_Inutile, ostez le superflu de cet ardent!_" [Footnote 243]

[Footnote 243: This anecdote reminds us of a tradition not forgotten
among the gyps of T.C.D. A very learned fellow, dismounting from his
steed some time during the dark ages, said to a little boy, "Juvenile,
circumambulate the quadruped round the quadrangle, and I shall
recompense thee with a pecuniary remuneration."]

The gamin is not great on the subject of verbal roots: he uses the words, but does not trouble himself about the quarter from whence they come. He is not aware that his own name is the _galopin_ (tavern-boy) of the middle ages. When he says that such or such article of dress, or food, or what you will, is _chouette_, (nice,) he is merely retaining the _souef_ (doux) of the old French poetry. His friend is his _copin_, the _compaign_ (comrade) of old times; the boy he despises is a _capon_, the name applied to the Jews in the days of Philip the Fair. His _rigolo_ comes to him from the verb _rigoler_, (to amuse one's self,) so often used in _Maistre Pathelin_, our Village Lawyer, a farce of the fifteenth century. An umbrella is a _rifflard_ with him, though he is little aware that it gets that name from _Mons. Rifflard_, the "Paul Pry" of the _Petite Ville_ of Picard.

Edouard Fournier, in his Enigmes des Rues de Paris, relates this characteristic anecdote on the subject of slang. It is the antithesis of O'Connell's victory over the fish-woman.

"A lady of the Halles (Fish Market) had one day a war of words with a
_meraicher_, (market gardener,) and, ye gods! such words as they
were! She told off one by one her relentless rosary of abuse. A
grave-looking man stood still, and attentively listened to the explosion
of the wonderful vocabulary.

"'Not bad, not bad,' said he from time to time. At last came the famous
phrase, 'You're no better than a melon,' and it served for finale to the
torrent of invectives--for the bouquet to the fire-work of coarse words.

"'Very well, indeed!' cried the grave man. 'And why very well?' said I.
'Because,' said he, 'this woman has just rendered homage to the
literature which I profess.' 'How?' 'She has nearly spoken Greek. Yes,
indeed, monsieur, the language of Homer. She has just honored this
bumpkin with the epithet [Footnote 244] which Thersites, in the second
book of the Iliad, line 235, applied to the Grecian kings in council.'"

[Footnote 244: The word used by Thersites is [Greek text], plural of
[Greek text], soft or ripe, as applied to fruit, and figuratively to
inactive or effeminate persons.]

An Unhealthy Suburb.

With any one's experience of the worst parts of the existing cities of Europe, it would be hard for him to realize the condition of the Quartier Montmartre in former days. The terrible description in Victor Hugo's romance gives only one small phase of it. All the results of extreme poverty, vice, negligence, and thorough laziness united to make a scene of squalor and wretchedness without parallel. There was no thought of removing nuisances, and at this day a section of some heaps of the old strata presents as curious a variety of substances as were ever discovered by the great Abbeville explorer himself. Some future professor, descended from Mr. Chaillu's gorilla, finding various evidences of human workmanship so far below the ordinary platform of the human family in A.D. 2500. will set them down as a deposit of the year 10,000 A.C. {694} Many a police-raid was effected on the inhabitants of the Cour des Miracles, of the Rue Temps-Perdu, of that of the _Vide Gousset_, (pickpocket,) of the Bout-du-Monde, of the Ville-Neuve; many hundreds seized and sent to the Salpetrière (house of correction) or to La Nouvelle France, (Canada,) and yet the wretched little dens in the filthy, ill-smelling lanes would not fail to get new tenants. "Unfeeling nobles, bad government!" say we. At last in the days of Louis XIII. it was announced that any artisan choosing to settle in the quarter might exercise his trade without let or hindrance, or paying duty or incurring expenses incidental to the carrying on of trades in other portions of the city. Makers of articles of household furniture chiefly availed themselves of the privilege; a better class of inhabitants took possession, and the atmosphere improved.

This (northern) quarter of the city has been, from the earliest times, incommoded by the number of streams arising among the northern and eastern hills adjoining the city, (Paris lying in a natural bowl-like cavity,) and endeavoring to find their way under houses and streets to the Seine. Many efforts have been made from time to time, to provide courses for these troublesome rivulets in channels arched over or open to the day; yet so late as 1855 some houses in the Faubourg Montmartre were filled to the ground floor by subterranean inundations; the inhabitants wondering what could bring water into their kitchens and cellars, and they so much above the level of the Seine. At the present time, under the strong volition of the emperor, an effective attempt is being made at the formation of a large subterranean river and its feeders.

Begging A Thriving Business.

Many visitors to the existing exhibition, while exploring and admiring the Place de Carrousel and its surroundings, will scarcely dream of the space between the Tuileries, the Louvre, and the Palais Royal having been once occupied by an hospital for three hundred poor blind men. This at present magnificent quarter was a poor place in the days of St. Louis, and there were the straggling habitations built. Dust-heaps and filth of many kinds distinguished the locality, and in this uninviting spot the three hundred blind endured life from the days of good Saint Louis.

At its first institution, the hospital was a mere night refuge--a retreat where the blind men were sure of a house over their heads and a sort of bed to sleep on after their _criailleries_ all day through the streets. The old charities were seldom complete in themselves. The pious founders did a certain portion of the good work, leaving to the public an opportunity of completing it. Philip the Fair added a dress stamped with the fleur de lys, and the poor blind man thus equipped was on a level with _Edie Ochiltree_, and so privileged, he "_tote jor ne finit de braire,_" (the whole day he ceased not his braying,) as an old writer coarsely expressed himself.

There was a parallel to this institution in higher quarters, even in literary regions. In the College of Navarre, placed under the highest patronage, the pupils went in the morning through the streets, stretching out the hand, and crying, "Bread, bread for the poor scholars of Madame de Navarre!"

The three hundred were well looked after, all things considered. They had a poor-box in every church of France. They were privileged not only to beg at the doors, but even to exercise their quest in the church itself. A difficulty arose from the circumstance of some churches affording to the "King's Bedesmen" a better harvest than others. All or most would naturally crowd to fleece the richest and most charitable congregations, and dire confusion would ensue. {695} But there were heads equal to the emergency. Once a year an auction was held; a good church was set up, bedesmen bid for its possession; it was knocked down to the best small batch of bidders, and the money they gave then, or as they made it, put into a common fund. The least well off or least speculative got the worst stands, but they received their share of the money arising from the auction.

This exceptional state of things continued till within the second half of last century, when the office of grand almoner became invested in the Cardinal de Rohan. The wretched habitations of the three hundred, their poor church left to ruin, the dust-heaps and pools of evil odor with which they were surrounded, so badly harmonized with the neighborhood of the Palais Royal, the Tuileries, and the Louvre, between which they lay, that it entered the speculative mind of the cardinal that it would be a profitable business to remove the poor inmates to a more cleanly and comfortable domicile, and sell the large plot of land on which the straggling settlement reposed. A solvent company was found, the land disposed of for six millions of livres, and the Hotel of the Black Musketeers, Rue de Charenton, was purchased for the blind men at somewhat less than half a million. This took place in 1779, and since then the churches and the streets have been relieved from the annoyance of the _state_ beggars. They still occupy the Hotel Rue de Charenton, and the curious traveller now passing down the magnificent Rue Rivoli, with palaces on either hand, can scarcely persuade himself that the space round him was, less than a century since, a dedalus of dirty lanes and ill-kept, squalid dwellings.

The Morgue And Its Derivation.

"Whoe'er was at Paris must needs know the Grève" was said and sung three half-centuries ago. Whoever was or was not at Paris must have heard of the Morgue, where the bodies of unknown persons who have met with sudden deaths were exposed for some days, to be recognised by their friends. Perhaps he is not aware of the cause of applying to the temporary abode of the quiet dead a name implying such a different idea. The dismal little building is now not to be found in its old locality, Quai du Marché Neuf, south side of the Cité.

In the great as well as the little Chatelet (prison) of past days there was a room called the little prison, where new-comers were brought "to sit for their portraits," that is, undergo a rigorous inspection as to their features by the lower officials of the place. Readers of Pickwick's incarceration will not require an elaborate description of the process. Now, such a sharp and supercilious scrutiny of the countenance is expressed by the word _Morgue_. The humorist, D'Assoucy, has left a description of the inspection he underwent on such an occasion, and the terror into which he was thrown by a long sharp knife, wielded by a short, broad, and fat officer, but which was only designed to cut away the ribbons that secured his breeches, and the band of his hat, and thus remove all available instruments of self destruction in the Grand Chatelet.

When this apartment changed its destination, and became a place of exposure for the dead, it continued to retain its name; and, on the destruction of the building, the title went to the sinister-looking edifice built for the same purpose. While the Chatelet remained, the sisters of the hospital convent of St. Catherine, corner of the streets of St. Denis and of the Lombards, bestowed the rites of sepulture on the poor remains not recognized. The other specialty of the good sisters was the relief of poor women in destitute circumstances.

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The easily led populace of Paris were long under the impression that a visit to the Morgue, and the consequent withdrawal of a corpse, would cost the friends a hundred and one crowns. So the bereaved families were seldom in a hurry with their visit. In vain did the lieutenant of police in 1736 endeavor to undeceive them.