Chapter I (1)

"If all the members of my body should be changed into as many tongues, and should assume as many voices, I should still be unable to say enough of the virtues of the saintly and venerable Paula."

It is in these words of pious enthusiasm that St. Jerome, himself so holy a man, and accustomed to the guidance of so many noble souls, begins his biography of Paula, when, at the instance of her daughter, Eustochium, and to dry her tears, he undertook to record her mother's virtues.

Placing himself with awe in the presence of God and his angels, St. Jerome says: "I call to witness our Lord Jesus Christ and his saints, and the guardian angel of this incomparable woman, that what I say is simple truth, and that my words are unworthy of those virtues celebrated throughout the world, which have been the admiration of the church, and which the poor yet weep for. Noble by birth, more noble still by her holiness; powerful in her opulence, but more illustrious afterward in the poverty of Christ; of the race of the Scipios and of the Gracchi; heiress of Paulus Emilius, from whom she takes her name of Paula; direct descendant of that famous Martia Papyria, who was wife to the conqueror of Perseus, and mother of the second Scipio Africanus; she preferred Bethlehem to Rome, and the humble roof of a poor dwelling to the gilded palaces of her ancestors."

Paula was born in Rome, about the middle of the fourth century, the 5th of May, of the year 347, in the reign of Constantius, and of Constans, the sons of Constantine, seven years after the death of the latter prince. Julius was then Pope at Rome. Paula belonged, through her mother, Blesilla, to one of the most ancient and illustrious families of Rome; and it seemed as if Providence wished to unite all earthly distinctions in this child, for the purest blood of Greece mingled in her veins with the noblest blood of Rome. At this time nothing was more common than alliances between the Roman and Greek families, as is proved by the Greek names which we find in the Roman genealogies. The father of Paula, Rogatus, was a Greek, and claimed royal descent from the kings of Mycaenas; and Agamemnon himself is said to have been his direct ancestor.

St. Jerome gives no further detail of the family of Paula, excepting that he mentions casually that their possessions were vast, including very important estates in Greece near Actium, besides their domain in Italy. "If," says St. Jerome, "I take note of her opulence and wealth, it is not that I attach importance to these temporal advantages, but in order to show that the glory of Paula in my eyes was not in having possessed them, but in having laid them at the feet of Jesus Christ."

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A more real advantage of her birth was, that her noble family were Christians, although a portion of them still remained pagans. This intermingling of creeds must not surprise us; for the resistance to conversion was great, and throughout the fourth century it was a common thing to see worshippers of the true God and of Jupiter under the same roof.

Rome, in truth, presented then a great contrast. Christian Rome and pagan Rome stood face to face, and pagan Rome, as yet untouched by barbarians, still wore an imposing aspect. The Capitol still stood in pride, crowned with the statues and temples of the heathen gods. Opposite, on the Palatine, stood the ancient dwelling of the Caesars, with its marble porticoes; and at the foot of the two hills the old Forum surrounded with pagan temples. Further still, and separated from the Forum by the Sacred Way and the Amphitheatre of Flavius, rose the immense Colosseum; and at the other extremity the great circus and the aqueducts of Nero. On the borders of the Tiber was the mole of Adrian, the mausoleum of Augustus, with temples, theatres, baths, porticoes, etc., on every side; indeed, every monument of luxury and superstition, showing how deeply rooted paganism still was in the capital of the empire.

Nevertheless, by more than one sign it was easy to recognize that all this pagan grandeur was fast fading away before another power; and if polytheism still found strong support in old traditions and customs, institutions and monuments, it was the influence of the past, which was lessening every day. The future belonged to the church, and Christianity was daily gaining the upper hand. The pagan temples which were still standing were empty, the crowd now disdaining sacrifices. Silence and solitude reigned around the gods, while the new faith, spreading out its magnificence in broad daylight, covered Rome with superb basilicas. At the same time, Rome, deserted by the emperors for political reasons, which served the divine purpose, seemed given up to the majesty of pontifical rule; and the popes, brought out from the Catacombs and placed by Constantine in the imperial palace, already gave a foreshadowing to the world of the glory which should henceforth invest the Holy See.

At this time there sprang from the bosom of the church a soul who was destined to exercise a vast influence upon the religious orders throughout the universe.

The blood of the martyrs and early Christians had not been shed in vain. It was just at this epoch in the history of Christianity that Providence gave being to a child destined by her holiness to be one of the marvels of the age.

We have sufficient data to know what her education was and under what influences she grew up to womanhood. The old Roman spirit and the Christian spirit were both fitted to form a character of the highest order. Austere honor, severe self-respect, noble traditions of ancient customs, were early inculcated in the mind of Paula. She came of a race of whom St. Jerome said: "Remember that in your family a woman very rarely, if ever, contracts a second marriage." Besides the holy books which were her first studies, her reading was vast and extended, embracing both the literature of Greece and Rome. We shall see how in after-life this early culture developed in her the rich gifts of nature, establishing equilibrium between her intellect and her character.

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Paula was brought up by her mother with that ardent love for the practice of her religion, which in all its perfection belonged especially to the days when persecution made these observances most precious to the early Christians. She followed Blesilla to the basilicas and to all feasts of the church, and also to visit the tombs of the martyrs and to the Catacombs. This last devotion was peculiarly dear to the Christians of the fourth century. They sought to glorify those victorious soldiers. "See," cried St. Chrysostom, "the tomb of the martyrs! The emperor himself lays down his crown there, and bends the knee."

There was not, perhaps, a family of Christians in Rome, which did not have some loved member among the glorious dead lying in the long galleries of the Catacombs. Saint Jerome speaks of the pious attraction of these sanctified asylums in the great city of the martyrs.

In this atmosphere of love for the church, and of faith in Christ and in the divine origin of Christianity, young Paula grew up. It was in those days the custom for the daughters of noble houses in Rome to marry young; and when Paula was fifteen years of age, her parents gave her in marriage to a young Greek whose name was Toxotius.

He belonged, on his mother's side, to the ancient family of the Julians, which boasted, as we know, of going back to the time of AEneas:

"Julius, à magno dimissum nomen Iülo."
_Virgil's AEneid._

Toxotius did not have the faith of his bride. These mixed marriages were not rare in those days; witness Monica and Patricius, the parents of St. Augustine.

Christianity had tolerated such marriages from the beginning, in the hope that the infidel husband might be won by the wife to her belief. When, robed in a white tunic of the finest wool, according to custom, her brow covered with the _flammcum_, Paula laid her trembling hand in that of Toxotius, who can tell with what holy emotion, what elevation of thought, what purity of feeling and of hope, her soul was filled! On the other hand, Toxotius does not seem to have been unworthy of his Christian bride, and the uncommon affection Paula bore him ever afterward, her inconsolable grief for his loss, all proves that their marriage was among those which the world calls happy. God blessed this union. Four daughters were successively born to them.

The eldest, called Blesilla after her grandmother, seemed gifted with a vivacious and most interesting character; her health was delicate, but her full, rich nature gave early promise of that rare beauty of mind and soul, which developed perfectly in after-years to the joy of Paula.

Paulina, the second, had also a fine nature, but the very opposite of Blesilla's. Her light was not like her sister's, a shining flame; but with less brilliancy of wit, and less vivacity of character, she possessed great good sense and solid judgment, giving promise of being as strong in character as her sister was brilliant.

As for the third of these young girls, called by the graceful name of Eustochium, borrowed from the Greek, and meaning _rectitude_ or _rule_, she was a gentle child, modest, reserved, timid. One would say she was like a flower hiding within herself her own perfume; but this perfume was sweet, and on a nearer view one could not avoid seeing in this young soul all the treasures which would one day flower and bloom. It is difficult to picture to ourselves Rufina. {383} She appears but once in the history of her mother, at the moment of the departure of Paula for the east, sad, bathed in tears, and yet silent and resigned; stamped, even in childhood, with that painful charm which belongs particularly to those beings not destined by providence to mature, but to fall away and die young.

Paula's married life was passed in the midst of all the magnificence which marked the decline and fall of the empire. She passed through the streets of Rome, as did the other patrician ladies, in a gilded litter, carried by slaves. She would have feared to put her dainty feet on the earth, or to touch the mud of the streets. The weight of a silk dress was almost too much for one so sensitive to carry; and had a ray of sunshine intruded into her litter, it would have seemed to her a _fire_.

"_Et solis calor incendium,_" etc., etc.
_Epist. ad Pammachium_.

In those days she used rouge and cereum, like other women of her rank; she passed much of her time at the bath, which consumed so great a part of life in Rome; she spent the winter, according to usual custom, at Rome, and the summer in some villa in the country, passing her time most agreeably between her books and a chosen circle of friends.

In the midst of all this luxury, leading a life far removed from the virtues which she practised later, Paula was yet known and respected as a woman of great dignity of character and irreproachable conduct. And if, during these happy years, the young wife of Toxotius did not always sufficiently bear in mind the maxim of the apostle, which teaches us to use the things of this world, without giving them our affections inordinately; if she tasted too freely of its pleasures and dangerous vanities, in the trials which she was soon to encounter, there was compensation to be made for this self-indulgence, and, in her austere penance, a super-abundant expiation. Saint Jerome tells us that Paula had none of the barbaric arrogance common to the Roman women--that which made them purse-proud, cruel to their slaves, passionate, and impatient, which Juvenal describes so admirably in his imperishable satires. In Paula all these bad passions gave place to gentleness, softness, goodness. "This wealthy daughter of the Scipios," says St. Jerome, "was the gentlest and the most benevolent of women--to little children, to plebeians, and with her own slaves. She possessed that excelling goodness, without which noble birth and beauty are worthless, and which is especially characteristic of a lofty nature. This sweetness of mind, combined with her austere sense of honor, were the two features of her soul which, by their contrast, made her countenance most charming.

It is easy to conceive how such a woman performed the delicate social duties that devolved upon her. Her associations were of two kinds. She was intimate with all the celebrated women in the church, such as Manilla and Titiana; at the same time the pagan relations of Toxotius all loved her, and she received them frequently at her house, bearing in mind the duty of the Christian woman to let them see her religion in such a light as would lead them to respect and honor it. And so it was that, by her fireside, Paula was the happiest of wives and of mothers. Her young family grew up joyously around her, filling her with bright hopes for the future.

She had long wished to give her husband a son and heir. Her prayer was answered; and she gave birth to a son, her last child, who received the name of Toxotius, after his father.

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This is all that history tells us of the first phase in the life of Paula. We see her thus with every happiness at once, "the pride," says St. Jerome, "of her husband, of her family, and of all Rome."

We know no more of her life up to the age of thirty. The Paula of history, the saint whom God was to give as an example to souls, is not the woman of the world, nor the happy woman; she is the woman struck as if by lightning, blasted in her happiness; and from this trial rising up generously, and by a great flight soaring far above common virtues and the ordinary condition of pious souls, up to those heroic acts which only emanate from great sorrows. It would seem as if God had been pleased to accumulate upon her, for thirty years, all the felicity of earth--to adorn, as it were, this victim of his love, and to make us comprehend the better by the subsequent destruction of this, how vain is earthly happiness.

It is here that the historian takes hold of Paula, and that the veil is lifted from her. Now begins her true history, the history of her soul.

Paula was only thirty-one years of age when Toxotius died and she became a widow. The blow to her was terrible. In the first moments of her grief she was completely stunned and powerless. It was feared by her friends that she would not long survive the shock. Nothing could stop her tears. She could not be comforted. From day to day the void was growing deeper and deeper into her heart.

There is a decisive turning-point in the life of every one, on which the future depends. This moment had now come for Paula. Two ways lay open before her--the world on one side, God on the other. She determined, in her sorrow, to give up the world, to lead for ever afterward the life of a Christian widow, and to seek for consolation in this resolution.

After the first outburst of grief, when she came to herself, her decision was irrevocably made. Human things were never more to regain the hold they had had over her up till now. She understood what God wanted of her; namely, "to accept the sacrifice and change her whole life." So, as St. Francis de Sales tells us, "the heart of a widow who could not give herself all to God during the lifetime of her husband, flies in search of celestial perfumes, when he has been taken from her."

Paula was surrounded with many noble examples. Marcella lived in her palace on Mount Aventine, where she had gathered together a band of widows and virgins from amongst the noblest families of Rome, who gave great edification by their virtue and charity. How and for what purpose had Providence permitted this community to be formed, which gave such an impetus to the religious life? It is necessary that we should answer in some detail, for this is the key to the whole life of Paula.

The church, resting from the earlier persecutions, which inflamed zeal and devotion, was now in great peril from the growing influence of security and wealth, in spreading a pagan and Roman love of indolence and indifference. The empire was declining, and its moral fall was hastened by political troubles. The degenerate Romans consoled themselves for their abasement, by the melancholy enjoyments of luxury and vice. Luxury and debauchery were already creeping into the Christian lines, thus attacking the most vital parts of the church. False widows and virgins no longer scrupled to show light conduct beneath the veil. {385} There must be a remedy found equal to the evil. God failed not to bring succor to his church, and the spirit of holiness became all the more manifest in her faithful children, in proportion as the peril was great.

The reaction commenced in the east, with the great monastic foundations, which rose up in opposition to the world, performing prodigies in the way of austerities and moral improvement. At Rome, strange to say, the reform began where it was least to have been expected, namely, in the midst of the patricians. The signal was given by women. They threw themselves with ardor into the heroic path, and soon their husbands followed them. This regeneration was one of the most memorable in history, as well as in the annals of the church. It was started by St. Athanasius, who brought it with him from the east. Thrice exiled by Arian persecution, the great patriarch three times sought refuge in Rome. He had brought with him the revelation of the wonders realized by the fathers in the deserts of Egypt and on the banks of the Nile. His biography of the great Anthony took hold of every imagination, and gave new zeal to monastic life. Athanasius had passed seven years in the Theban deserts; he had known Anthony, Ricomius, and Hilarius, and told of the astounding graces of their supernatural life.

In one of these journeys of Athanasius to Rome, a noble Christian widow, named Albina, had the honor of receiving him as her guest. Albina had a daughter, Marcella, on whose noble soul the conversation of the great bishop made an extraordinary impression. Seated at his feet, the young girl drank in every word that fell from his lips. Some months after, out of deference to her mother's wishes, Marcella consented to marry; but when, at the end of seven months, she became a widow and was free, she made up her mind never to contract a second marriage, but to devote herself in Rome to the humble imitation of those virtues which Athanasius had taught her to venerate and admire. Nevertheless, her youth, her wit and great beauty drew around her many admirers. Amongst others was Cerealio, of high birth and large fortune. "I will be more her father than her husband," said he to Albina, who greatly desired the marriage, "I will leave her all my wealth, being already advanced in years." But Marcella was inflexible. "If I wished to marry again," said she to her mother, "I would marry a husband, and not an inheritance."

Cerealio was refused, and this discouraged all other suitors.

Marcella now gave up the world and made a desert of her magnificent palace. There she lived austerely, doing good works. She bid farewell to jewels, and even laid aside the seal ring always worn by the patrician women; and rising above their prejudice against the religious state, and particularly the coarse garb of the monks, she was the first who dared to assume the abased dress, and publicly imitated what St. Athanasius had taught her to believe good in the sight of God. The example soon became contagious, giving her many followers, who astonished Rome by their austerities and penances.

There was also at Rome, at this time, a young patrician lady whose name was Melanie. Suddenly, when only twenty-two, she lost her husband and two children, and laid them in one tomb on the same day. Accepting this dispensation of the divine will, Melanie resolved to devote her whole life to the shining virtues of which Marcella was so bright an example. {386} To increase her faith further, she started on a pious pilgrimage to the east, where Athanasius still lived. She saw him at Alexandria shortly before his death. After having visited the monasteries of Egypt and the Holy Land, Melanie was unwilling to return to Rome and its corruptions. She therefore founded for herself a monastery on the Mount of Olives, where she lived an austere and good life.

This example still further inflamed the souls of the Roman women, and numberless were those now in search of perfection; some remaining at home in their own houses, like the virgins and widows of the first centuries; others preferring to congregate together, and, without any fixed rule, make the trial of community life. The centre of all this movement was Marcella, who possessed in an extraordinary degree the power of attracting others to her. She was truly the standard-bearer of this noble band, of whose hearts grace had taken possession. The venerable Albina was like the revered ancestress of the little community formed on Mount Aventine. The most prominent of those who joined Marcella were Sophronia, Felicitas, and Marcellina. The latter was daughter of an ancient governor of the Gauls. Outside of Marcella's house, the names best known among those who had devoted themselves to a life of austerity and virtue, were Lea, a holy widow whom the church has canonized; the admirable Asella, and Fabiola, who was of the ancient family of Fabius. All this movement toward religious life was greatly encouraged by the pious pontiff who then filled St. Peter's chair. At the time Paula became a widow. Pope Damasus was nearly seventy-five years of age. He was one of the noblest of the early popes, and one of those who did most for Christianity and for the development of Christian piety. He had a sister named Irene, who, consecrating herself to God, died at the age of twenty, in honor of whom he composed a most touching epitaph.

Such was the group of souls and the array of virtue which Paula had around her, and which attracted her, when she became a widow, to seek a more perfect life.

In the words of St. Jerome, Marcella, like an incendiary, blew upon these lighted cinders and set them in a blaze. She found words to bid those eyes, so dimmed by tears, to turn to heaven; and she urged that bruised spirit to rise up and seek God. All this Marcella did with a sister's tenderness. Her solicitude extended to the children of her friend, and she begged that Eustochium, who already showed a predilection for the religious life, might be confided to her care. Paula acceded to this wish with joy, keeping with her Blesilla, Paulina, Rufina, and Toxotius. Then she began with ardor and faith the new life she had marked out for herself, and she soon outshone all others in virtue. There was a sudden and admirable expansion of greatness in her soul. With her this rupture with the world was but a higher flight toward God.

Her first step in advance was a new and great love of prayer; for so it is, that the more the heart is closed to earth, the more it opens to heaven. Her love of God and of celestial things grew stronger each day. She lived most austerely, practising every Christian mortification. All the habits of luxury of other days were thrown aside, and the very comforts of life diminished. She slept on the bare floor, and rivalled in abstinence and fast the ascetics of the desert. She often wept over the thought of the self-indulgence of her former worldly life. {387} These tears, together with those which she shed for her husband, Toxotius, flowed so constantly and so abundantly, that her eyes were injured, and her sight endangered. Paula was the pale one, pale with fasting and almost blinded by tears.

Paula's heart was inflamed with charity. She found in the poor another outlet of love for an ardent nature; and as she surpassed Marcella and all others in austerities, so she also surpassed them in charities. All her income was given in alms, and "never," says St. Jerome, "did a beggar come away from her empty-handed."

It was now two years since Paula had lived in this holy way, when great news reached the little community of Aventine. In 382, Pope Damasus called to Rome the Catholic bishops in council, and many venerable bishops were expected there from the east. The object of the council was to decide several questions of faith, as well as to put an end to the long pending schism of Antioch. A few bishops only answered the call of the Roman pontiff, the greater part excusing themselves in a letter which is celebrated in ecclesiastical history. Among those who came were Paulinus, one of the bishops of Antioch, and St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamina in the island of Cyprus.

It is easy to imagine the emotion produced among these recluses by the arrival in Rome of such personages as these holy bishops, who came from the mysterious east where the Catholic faith had been cradled. They had seen Jerusalem and the Holy Land; they knew the fathers of the desert, whose fame filled the world. What lessons of wisdom would they not be able to gather from such visitors!

Paula obtained from Pope Damasus the honor of having St. Epiphanius as her guest, and it was in her daily interviews with him, as well as with Paulinus, that the desire to see the east, which she was one day to realize, first sprung up in her mind.

History has preserved few details of this council of the year 382. The great work to be brought about by these eastern bishops at Rome was the new impetus which their presence was to give to religion among the Christians of Rome already in the way of life and truth. There came from the east, in company with the holy bishops, a man destined to exercise great influence over the future life of Paula and her friends. This man was St. Jerome. We must pause a moment and not pass by one who is perhaps the most striking, the most original, and the grandest figure of the fourth century. He stands alone in his strength--different from St. Hilarius of Poitiers, the profound theologian; from Ambrose, the sweet orator; from Augustine, the great philosopher, or Paulinus, the Christian poet. His features are marked and stern, his character is austere and ardent; the burning reflection from an eastern sky rests upon him; he is laden with the learning of the Christian and the pagan world; the indefatigable athlete of the church, he whose powerful voice moved the old world when they listened to his pathetic lament over the fall of Rome, and which moves us still when we read it now after the lapse of centuries!

Such was Jerome; yet is this picture incomplete, for we have not mentioned his special gift for the direction of souls. He was their guide, their father. He it was who began this divine guidance, entrusted afterward to St. Bernard, and by him to St. Francis de Sales, from St. Francis de Sales to Bossuet and Fénélon, and so on down to our own times. It is this special gift which gives him so prominent a part in the history of Paula.

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Pope Damasus wished to detain him in Rome after the departure of the bishops for the east, in order that Jerome should expound the holy Scriptures and give answers to those who came to Rome from all parts of the globe for explanations of the dogmas and discipline of the church. A great friendship had sprung up between the sovereign pontiff and St. Jerome. The study of the holy Scriptures bound their affections together. "I know of nothing better," wrote the holy father to him in one of his letters, "than our conversations about Scripture; that is to say, when I ask questions, and you answer; and I say like the prophet, that your voice is sweeter to my heart than honey to my lips."

After the departure of Epiphanius and Paulinus, Marcella and Paula sought for Jerome and entreated him to explain the Scriptures to them at Mount Aventine. The austere monk resisted them long, but at last yielded, and crowds came to hear him. He would read the text, and then make his comments. The listeners were captivated by his eloquence, and his language was peculiarly strong, clear, and forcible. His monk's attire, his cheeks, sunken by penance and browned by the eastern sun, and his deep voice, all combined to throw a strange spell over his hearers.

He, too, soon discovered that he spoke to noble souls, and thus was his abiding interest awakened by his own delight in opening such treasures to those so capable of appreciating them.

Such was the ardor of Paula and her friends in studying the Scriptures, that Jerome was in admiration at their labor and perseverance; and it excited him to further efforts, and made him feel the necessity of undertaking a complete translation of the entire Bible, which, indeed, was the work of his life from that time afterward, without remission; being begun on Mount Aventine, among his favorite disciples, and only ending many years later, with his life. Jerome now undertook the spiritual direction of Paula, Marcella, Asella, and their friends. Many of his letters to them have been preserved, a monument of this wonderful direction. He wrote to them unceasingly, and what remains to us of this vast correspondence suffices to show the noble light in which he viewed Christian duty. Their moral elevation is marvellous, and when from theory he came to practice, he seemed to trample under foot all human weakness and to expect from these high-born and gently nurtured patricians the abstinence and fasting of the Anchorites of the Theban deserts.

This direction of St. Jerome wrought wonders in the soul of Paula. She daily grew in grace, and became a still more noble example of austerity, of prayer, of abundant charities, and good works, and of the fruitful study of the Scriptures.

"What shall I say of the worldly goods of this noble lady, almost entirely spent on the poor?" exclaims St. Jerome. "What shall I say of her universal charity, which made her love and succor beings she had never even seen? What sick person was not nursed by her? She sought the afflicted throughout the great city, and ever thought she had met with a loss if the sick or the hungry had already found assistance before hers."

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This is what the love of Christ brought about in imperial and corrupt Rome when, for the first time, such Christian heroism burst forth from the midst of the patricians, their admirable and pious daughter shedding new lustre upon those glorious old pagan families.

To Be Continued.

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Bound With Paul.

The warden's wife followed her husband down the steps leading to the prison. "'_O caro Duca mio_,' is there an inscription over the door?" she asked; "for I have brought hope with me, and will not let it go."

Not having anything to say, the warden kept silent. He was used to his wife's fanciful ways of speaking, and liked to hear her pleasant voice, though her meaning might escape him. For education had emphasized the difference which nature had pronounced between these two--a difference which William Blake has defined in a word: the man looked _with_ his eyes, the woman looked _through_ hers.

Besides, the warden's attention was at the moment fully occupied. The prison-bell had rung the second time, and the convicts had finished their day's work. Mr. and Mrs. Raynor stood just within the great entrance of the prison, and watched the sluggish streams of crime that oozed from the doors of the different shops, joined in the yard, and crept toward them--an Acheron, in which human faces presently became visible; but faces bleached, unwholesome, and expressionless. Perhaps their souls had been scorched up in the baleful flames that had wafted these men hither, or mesmerized in the leaden to-and-fro of their lives. Or, more likely, retired to some secret recess of the brain, their restless wits might be working out new designs of evil. An occasional spark in some sidelong eye favored the latter guess.

"Now for explanation," the warden said, keeping a strict eye on the advancing line, yet aware of a hand stealing toward his arm. "Be careful, dear! my revolver is on that side. Your man will go into the furthest cell in the first ward. His name is Dougherty; his nationality, of course, a mystery. He was sentenced ten years for assault and highway robbery, and has now but two months to stay. Excepting this one affair, he has always borne a good name, and there couldn't be a better prisoner. He might have been pardoned out long ago if he had tried, but he never asks favors. When he came here, his only brother, a decent fellow, went to California. He couldn't stand the disgrace. But he writes once a month, a very good letter, too; and when the ten years shall be up, will come or send for his brother. They say that Dougherty behaved very well by him when he went away, and gave him all his, Dougherty's, money. I shouldn't wonder. The fellow has the strongest sense of duty I ever knew in a man. That's what is the matter with him now. He told the deputy yesterday that he should never go to chapel again. He had before been in doubt about it, he said; but when the chaplain praised Martin Luther, and called the church some ugly name or other, then he knew that it was a sin for him to listen. {390} I don't want to punish the man; but, of course, he must go to chapel. I can't make exceptions; and half a dozen of the worst rascals here have some way got wind of the affair, and have all at once experienced theology. That tall, heavy fellow, who murdered his mother and his brother, and then set fire to the house and burnt their bodies up, had his feelings badly hurt when the chaplain said something sarcastic of the pope's great toe. But Dougherty is honest, and if he will submit, I can easily bring the others down. If he should hold out, there will be trouble; for they will do for deviltry what he will do for conscience' sake. If you can talk him over, I shall be glad; but I haven't much hope of it. He is not a man likely to be influenced by a woman's soft words. He is granite."

The wife smiled saucily. "I have seen a silly little pink cloud make a granite boulder blush as though it had blood in it," she said.

At this moment the file of convicts reached the portal, and came winding through in the slow lock-step, separated noiselessly into detachments, a part moving toward the lower cells, the rest climbing the narrow flight of stairs leading to the upper tiers. The faces of the men caught an additional pallor from the cold, whitewashed stone of the prison, and a darker shade as, one by one, they disappeared into the cells, the doors clapping to in rapid succession behind them, like the leaves of a book run over in the fingers. In a few minutes the whole line had crumbled away, and there were visible but the three tiers of iron doors, each door with a hand thrust through the bars, and a dim face behind them. Mrs. Raynor glanced up the block to the last cell. The hand she saw there had a character of its own. The fingers were not half closed, listlessly waiting to be seen, but firm and straight, and the thumb was clasped tightly around the bar against which it rested--a dogged hand. "You think that the dungeon would have no effect?" she asked.

The warden repeated the word "dungeon" with a circumflex calculated to give the impression that the apartment in question was vaulted. "I doubt if even the strings will break him," he said. "You take a Catholic Irishman born in Ireland, and you can't hammer nor melt him into anything but a Catholic. He may lie as fast as a dog can trot, and steal your eye-teeth from under your eyes; but if you cut him into inch pieces, as long as he has a thumb and finger left, he will make the sign of the cross with them. You are losing courage, little woman."

"No!"

"Well, good luck to you! I'm going off."

The lady walked up the ward, nodding to the convicts who pressed eagerly for recognition, stopping to speak to those who had requests to make, and, pausing at a little distance from the upper cell, looked attentively at its occupant, herself unseen by him.

The warden had well compared this man to granite. He was tall, thick-set, as straight as a post, had the broad, combative Irish head, crowned with a luxuriance of dark-brown hair, and square jaws that promised a tenacious grip on whatever he might set his mental teeth in. But the face was honest, though hard, and the straight mouth did not look as though giving to lying or blasphemy, but had something solemn in its closing. The well-shaped nose was as notable for spirit as the mouth for firmness, and the blue-grey eyes were steady, not bright, and rather small. {391} Altogether, a man of whom one might say that, if he was not so good, he would not have been so bad.

This convict sat on a bench in the middle of his little whitewashed cell, and appeared to be lost in thought. But in his attitude there was none of that easy drooping which usually accompanies such abstraction. He sat perfectly upright and rigid, the only perceptible motion a quick one of the eyelids, the eyes fixed--locked, rather than lost in thought.

He rose immediately on seeing who his visitor was, bowed with a soldierly stiffness that was not without state, and waited for her to speak.

After a few pleasant inquiries, civilly answered, she told her errand. It was not so easy as she had expected; but she spoke kindly and earnestly, urging the necessity for discipline in such a place, and the unwillingness of the warden to inflict any punishment on him. "I have no doubt of your sincerity," she concluded, "though the others mean only mischief. But the decision must be the same in both cases."

He listened attentively to every word she said, then replied with quiet firmness, "I am sorry, ma'am, that there is going to be any trouble about it. But it would be a sin for me to go and hear Protestantism called the church of God, when it is no more a church than a barnacle is a ship."

"That is not the question," she persisted. "Admitting that what the chaplain says may be false, I still say that you ought to go. You are here in a state of servitude; you have no will of your own; your duty is obedience to the rules of the place; and the more difficult that duty, the more your merit. If you should listen with pleasure, or even with toleration, while your faith is attacked, that might be sin; but the listening unwillingly and with pain you can offer to God as a penance in expiation of the crime which obliges you to perform it. I am speaking now as a Catholic would. I believe that your priest would say the same."

She paused to note the effect of her words; but his face was unmoved.

"I have a dear friend who is a Catholic," she added. "For her sake I should be sorry to have you punished for such a cause."

This plea made no impression whatever. Plainly, the man was not soft-hearted, nor susceptible to flattery. He merely listened, and appeared to be gravely considering the subject.

"To yield would be humility; to refuse would be pride," she said. "You need not listen while in the chapel; you can think your own thoughts and say your own prayers."

As he still pondered, she again went over her argument, enlarging and dwelling on it till it reached his comprehension. He listened as before, but made no sign of approval nor dissent. Either from nature or habit, it seemed hard for the man to get his mouth open. But at length he spoke.

"You were right, ma'am, in telling me that my duty here is obedience," he said; "but you left out one condition--obedience in all that is not sin. If the warden should tell me to kill a man, it would not be my duty to obey. I do obey in all that is not sin. It would be a sin for me to go to chapel."

He spoke respectfully, but with decision; and the lady perceived that their argument had reached a knot which only the hand of authority could cut. She sighed, and abandoned her attempt.

{392}

Could she abandon it? Remembering the dungeon and the strings, her heart strengthened itself for one more effort. She had begun by marching straight up to the subject, challenging opposition; it might be better to approach circuitously. "Let me undermine him," she thought; and, turning away, as though leaving the captive to silence and loneliness again, let the sense of returning desolation catch him for an instant, then hesitated, and glanced backward. It was a good beginning; he was looking after her. The sight of a friendly face, the sound of a friendly voice, and liberty to speak, were unfrequent boons in that place, and too precious to be willingly relinquished,

"The days must seem long to you," she said.

She came nearer, and leaned against the door. "Yes, they are long; but I thank God for every one of them. My coming here was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was getting to be drunkard, and this put a stop to it."

As he spoke, he lifted his face and looked out at the strip of sky visible through the window across the corridor, and his eyes began to kindle.

"Have you a family?" the lady asked.

He waited a moment before answering, seemed to break some link of thought that had a bright fracture, and his expression underwent a slight but decided change. A light in it that had been lofty softened to a light that was tender, as at her question he looked down again. "There's Larry," he said.

"And who is Larry?"

The convict stared with astonishment at her ignorance. And, indeed, Mrs. Raynor was the only person about the prison who had not heard the name of this Larry. "He is my step-brother, ma'am," he replied. "We had but the one father; but he had his own mother. When she died, there were two of us left, and I took the lad and brought him to this country. He was five years old then, and I was twenty. I was a stone-cutter, and thought to do better here; and, faith, one way I have, and another way I haven't. Shame never touched one of us at home."

"Who took care of the child?" Mrs. Raynor asked.

"Myself, ma'am. He ate and slept with me, and I took him on my arm as often as I put my hat on. He had his little chair on the table in my shop, or he played about at the end of a long string. For the lad was venturesome, and I never trusted him but with a tether."

"He must have been a great care," she said.

"Have you any children, ma'am?" the convict asked.

"No."

"I thought that," he said dryly; then smiled. "Larry was like a picture. He had red cheeks and black eyes, and his hair was like gold with a shadow on it. It used to take me half an hour every morning to make his curls, and they reached to his waist. Everybody noticed the child, and they'd turn to look after him in the street. One of the richest ladies in the city wanted to take him for her own, and me to promise never to see him again; and when she told what she would do for him, I thought that perhaps I ought to let him go. The lady coaxed him, and gave him picture-books and candy, and then asked him if he'd go and live with her; and faith, ma'am, my heart didn't get such a scalding when Mary asked her promise back, and said she liked Larry best, as it did when that child went to the lady's knee and said he would go and live with her. God forgive me, but I hated her that minute. Well, I told her that I would think about it, and let her know the next day. {393} That night I dreamed that she had him, and that I saw him far off at play, dressed in jewels, and his little frock like a fall of snow. I dreamed that I couldn't speak to him, and that set me crying; and I cried so that I waked myself up. I put my hand out for the child, but I couldn't find him. He was a restless little fellow, and had crawled down to the foot of the bed. For a minute I thought that the dream was true; and then I knew that I couldn't let him go. I waked him up, and asked him if he'd stay and live for ever with his brother John; and I was a happy man when he put his little arms round my neck and said yes, he would. And I made a promise to the child that night, while he was asleep in my arms, that, since I kept him back from being a rich man, whatever he might ask of me in all his life, if it was my heart's blood, he should have it! And, ma'am, I've kept my promise."

The tenderness with which he spoke of his brother invested the convict's manner with the softening grace which it so much needed, and grew upon his rough nature like a gentian upon its rock.

"This brother is in California?" Mrs. Raynor asked.

The convict dropped his eyes. "He and Mary went there when I came here," he said.

"Who is Mary?"

"Mary is Larry's wife," was the brief reply.

"You hear from them?"

"Oh! yes," he said eagerly. "They write to me every month. In his last letter Larry said that he was coming after me at the end of my term; but I sent him word not to. I can go alone, and he will send me the money."

The man seemed to have a jealous suspicion of her thought that he had been cruelly deserted. "I told them to go," he said with a touch of pride; "and I shall go and live with them when I get out of this. They wouldn't hear to my going anywhere else."

He broke off, glanced through the window, and said, as if involuntarily, "There's the west wind!" then drew back, rather ashamed when the lady looked to find what he meant. "You see, ma'am, we don't have much to think of here, and there's only the sight of stone and iron, and that bit of sky. Three years ago there wasn't a glimpse of green; but two years ago I began to catch a flit of leaves when the west wind blew. Last summer I could see a green tip of a bough all the time, and now in the high March wind I can see a bit of a twig."

"It is an elm-tree," the warden's wife said; "and the branches are longest on this side. I think they stretch out for you to see. You miss many a pleasant sight here, Dougherty."

"What I miss is nothing to what I have seen," he said quickly, his eyes beginning again to kindle.

"What do you mean?"

He gazed at her searchingly for a moment, as if to read whether she were worthy to hear; then he looked up at the sky.

Mrs. Raynor tried not to be impressed. "He is a thief, serving out his sentence in the State prison," she repeated mentally. "He is a poor, ignorant Irishman, who can scarcely spell his own name, and who reverences a polysyllable next to the priest."

"I will tell you," he said after a moment, his voice trembling slightly, not with weakness, but with fervor. "When I first came here, I had to pray all the time to keep myself from going crazy; but by and by I got reconciled. {394} You know we never have a priest here, and must find things out as well as we can for ourselves. All I wanted to know was whether God was angry with me. Sometimes I thought he was; but that might be a temptation of the devil. What I am going to tell you happened about six months ago, at nine o'clock in the evening. The night-watch was in, and had just gone round. He spoke to me, and I answered him. I was in bed, and I shut my eyes as soon as he went back to his place. Something made me open them again, and I saw on the wall of my cell here a little spot like moonlight. It grew larger while I looked, and the whole cell was full of the light of it; and it trembled like the flame of a candle in the wind. There didn't seem to be any wall here; it was all opened out. I pulled the blanket about me and went down to my knees on the stone floor. I don't know how long it was before two faces began to show in the midst of the light; and when they came, it was still. At first they were faint; but they grew brighter till they were as bright as I could bear. I couldn't tell whether it was the brightness in their faces or the thought in my heart, that brought the tears into my eyes. There was the Blessed Virgin with the Infant Jesus in her arms, and they both looking at me and smiling. And while they smiled, they faded away!"

"How probable that would sound if it were related as having happened in the year of our Lord 62, instead of 1862!" the lady thought, restraining a smile, awed by the perfect conviction of the speaker.

"Dougherty," she said, "a man like you ought not to be caught at highway robbery. How did it happen?"