Chapter LIII: Part II: Excelsior! (1)

“Great news! Extra! Three sous!” The newsvender, a ragged little urchin who nearly collapsed under the weight and volume of his extras, was shouting out these three startling facts at the top of his voice as I went out early in the morning. Two rheumatic old rag-women, immediately suspending their investigation of the dust-heaps, dropped their crooks, and cried out to him to know the news. Was it a victory or a defeat, or was it anything about the siege? But the urchin, as hard-hearted as any editor, waved the momentous sheet majestically with one hand, and answered, “Three sous!” To the renewed entreaties of the rag-women he condescended so far as to say that it was well worth the money, that they never spent three sous more advantageously, for the news was wonderful news, but for less than three sous they should not have it. I did not altogether believe either in the extra or in the wonderful news, but the newspaper fever was on me like the rest of the world, so I produced the inexorable three sous and took the paper. The moment the two women saw this they came up to me, and, evidently taking for granted that I was going to give them the benefit of my extravagance, stood to hear the news. I read it aloud for them, as well as to a milk-boy who was passing at the moment and stood also to get his share of the three sous, and a remarkably sympathetic audience the three made. The news was none of the best. The Prussians were at Chalons, and they might be at the gates of Paris before another week.

“That was MacMahon’s plan from the first,” observed the milk-boy, “and, if the Prussians fall into the trap, the game is ours.”

The rag-women, not being so well up in military tactics and technicalities, meekly begged to be enlightened as to the nature and aim of the trap in question, and the young politician was so kind as to explain to them that the marshal had all along been luring on the Prussians to Paris, which was to be their pitfall; Mont Valérien and the fortifications would annihilate them like flies; not a man of them would go back alive; the only fear was that that rascally Bismarck would be too many guns for the marshal, and make him fight before Chalons, in which case, he observed, “it was all up with the marshal, and consequently with France.”

Having delivered himself of this masterly exposition of the case, the milk-boy swung his cans, touched his cap to me, and, having achieved the most preternaturally knowing wink I ever beheld, strode off without waiting to see the effect of his words on the two old women. They looked after him aghast. Had they been talking to a confidential agent of the War Office, or to an emissary of the rascally Bismarck himself? A spy, in fact?

“One ought to have one’s mouth sewed up these times,” observed the more ancient of the beldames, casting a half-suspicious glance at me as I folded my newspaper and put it into my pocket. “One never knows whom one may be speaking to.”

This remark was too deep and too fearfully suggestive to admit of any commentary from her companion; the only thing to be done in such a crisis was to take refuge in professional pursuits that offered no ground for suspicion, so seizing her crook the rag-woman plunged prudently once more into her rubbish.

A little further on, turning the corner of a street, I came on two gentlemen whom I knew, standing in animated conversation. I stopped to ask what news? None, except that the horizon was growing darker from hour to hour. The despatches from the frontier were as bad as could well be. As to pooh-poohing the siege now it was sheer stupidity, one of them declared, and, for his part, he only wished it were already begun: it was the last chance left us of rejecting the disasters of the campaign and crushing the remains of the enemy. His companion indignantly scouted both the certainty of the siege and the desirability of it. The city was not to be trusted; no great city ever was; there were hundreds of traitors only too ready to open the gates to the enemy at his own price. Look at the proprietors! Did any one suppose there were fifty proprietors in Paris who would not cry _Capitulons_! before one week was out?

“Well, let the proprietors be taken down to their own cellars, and kept there under lock and key, and let them sit on their money-bags till the siege is over!” suggested the advocate of the siege.

“Then you must lock up half the National Guard and the Mobiles,” resumed the other, “for they are full of those money-loving traitors.”

This was not very reassuring. I kept repeating to myself that public opinion at a moment like this was always an alarmist, and that the wisest plan would be to read no papers and to consult nobody, but just wait till events resolved themselves, as they infallibly do, sooner or later, to those who have patience to wait for them, and then act as they decided; but it was no use. I went home in dire perplexity, and began to wish myself in Timbuctoo or the Fiji Islands, or anywhere out of the centre of civilization and the fashions and chronic alarm and discontent. Things went on in this way for another week, the tide advancing rapidly, but so gradually that it was difficult for those on shore to note its progress and be guided by it. No one would own to being frightened, but it was impossible to see the scared faces of the people, as they stood in groups before every new placard setting forth either a fresh order from the Hôtel de Ville or some dubious and disheartening despatch from the seat of war, without feeling that the panic was upon them, and that the complicated problems of the great national struggle had resolved themselves into the immediate question: Shall we stay, or must we fly? When you met a friend in the street, the first, the sole, the supreme salutation was: “Do you believe in the siege? Are you going to stay?” The obduracy of the Parisians in refusing to believe in the siege up to the very last moment was certainly one of the strangest phases of the siege itself. They were possessed by a blind faith in the sacredness and inviolability of their capital, and they could not bring themselves to believe that all Europe did not look upon it with the same eyes; they thought that Prussia might indeed push audacity so far as to come and sit down before the gates, but beyond that Bismarck would not go; he would not dare; all Europe would stand up and cry shame on him, not out of sympathy for France, but out of sheer selfishness, for Paris was not the capital of France, but of Europe. So the walls were white with proclamations and advertisements and invitations to non-combatants to withdraw, and practical advice to the patriotic citizens whose glorious duty it was soon to be to defend the city; and the great exodus of the so-called poltroons and strangers had begun to pour out, and the much more inconvenient sort of non-combatants, the homeless population of the neighboring villages, poured in--a sorry sight it was to see the poor little _ménages_, the husband trundling the few sticks of furniture on a hand-cart, with the household cat perched on the top of the pile, while the wife carried a baby and bundle, and a little one trotted on by her side, carrying the canary bird in its painted cage--and still the real, born Parisian said in the bottom of his heart: “It will never come to a siege, they will never dare; England will interfere, Europe will not allow it.”

On the morning of the third of September I went out to make some purchases on the Boulevards. Coming back, I saw the Madeleine draped in black, and a number of mourning-coaches drawn up in ghastly array on the Place. The solemn cortége was descending the last steps. I stood to let it pass, and then cast a glance round to see if there was any one I knew in the crowd. To my surprise I saw Berthe in the midst of a group of several persons who had broken away from the stream, and were standing apart in the space inside the rails; she was talking very emphatically, and the others were listening to her apparently with great interest, and seemed excited by whatever she was telling them. When the crowd had nearly cleared away, I beckoned to her. She ran out to me at once.

“You are the very person I wanted to see,” she said, clutching me by the arm in her vehement way. “I was going straight to your house. I have just been to the Etat Major, and met General Trochu there. He came down on account of despatches that had just come in, and have put them all in a state of terrible consternation. There is not a doubt of it now; the city will be blockaded in ten days from this. The Prussians are within as many days’ march from us. I thought of you immediately, and I asked the general what you ought to do; he said by all means to go, and within forty-eight hours; after that the rails may be cut from one moment to another; he was very emphatic about it, and said it would be the maddest imprudence of you to remain; there is a terrible time before us, and no one should stay in Paris who could leave. Of course, you will leave at once.”

I was too much taken aback to say what I would do. The news was so bewildering. I had never looked upon the siege as the impossible joke it had been so long considered, neither did I share the infatuation of the Parisians about the inviolability of Paris in the eyes of Europe, and for the last fortnight we had come to expect the siege as almost a certainty, that was now only a question of time, and yet we were as much startled by this cool official announcement of it as if the thing had never been seriously mentioned before.

“I don’t know what I will do,” I said; “if we had nerves equal to it, it would be the most fearfully interesting experience to go through.”

“No doubt,” assented Berthe; “but it is an experience that will tax the strongest nerves; of that you may be sure; and unless one has duties to keep one here, I think it would be mad imprudence, as the general said, to run the risk.”

“You mean to leave, of course?” I said.

“No; I mean to stay. I am pretty sure of my nerves; besides, as a Frenchwoman, I have a duty to perform; I must bear my share of the common danger; it would be cowardly to fly; but with you it is different. I don’t think you would be justified in remaining for the interest of the thing. Only if you mean to go, you must set about it at once. Have you got your passport?”

“No; I had not gone that far in believing in the siege.”

“It was very foolish,” said Berthe; “all the foreigners we know have got theirs.”

“I will go for it now,” I said. “Come on with me, and let us talk it all over. Are you on foot?”

“No; but I shall be glad of the walk home; I will send away the carriage.”

She did so, and we went on together.

“It is like death,” I said; “no matter how long one is expecting it, it comes like a blow at the last; I can hardly realize even now that the siege is so near. Why, it was only the other day we were listening to those people joking about it all!”

“It was a sorry joke,” said Berthe; “but that is always the way with us; we go on joking to the end. I believe a Frenchman would joke in his coffin if he could speak.”

“And you really mean to stay, Berthe?”

“I do. I shall be of some use, I hope; at any rate, I will try my best. But we can talk of that presently. First about you; are you decided?”

“I cannot say; I feel bewildered,” I replied. “I long to stay, and yet I fear it; it is not the horrors of the siege that would deter me, at least I don’t think it is that; it is the dread of being taken up as a spy.”

She burst out into one of her loud, merry laughs.

“What a ridiculous idea! Why on earth should you be taken for a spy?”

“There is no why or wherefore in the case,” I said, “that is just the alarming part of it; the people are simply mad on the point; they have barked themselves rabid about it, and they are ready to bite every one that comes in their way. Twice on my way into town this morning I heard a hue and cry raised somewhere near, and when I asked what was the matter, a mad dog, or a house on fire, the answer was, ‘Oh, no; it’s an _espion_ they’ve started, and he’s giving them chase!’ One man said to me, half in joke, half in earnest: ‘Madame would do well to hide her fair hair under a wig; it’s dangerous to wear fair hair these times.’ I own it made me feel a little uncomfortable.”

“Well, that is not very comforting for me,” said Berthe, laughing, “my hair is _blond_ enough to excite suspicion.”

“Oh! your nationality is written on your face,” I said; “there is no fear of you ever being mistaken for anything but a Frenchwoman.”

On arriving at the Embassy, we found a throng of British subjects waiting for their passports, and considerably surprised at being kept waiting, and expressing their surprise in no measured terms. Surely they paid dear enough for the maintenance of their embassies abroad to be entitled to prompt and proper attendance when once in a way they called on their representatives for a service of this kind! The attachés were so overworked that it was impossible to avoid the delay? Then why were there not special attachés put on for the extra press of work? And so on. Some nervous old couples were anxious to have the benefit of his excellency’s personal opinion as to the prudence of leaving their plate behind them, and, if he really thought there was a risk in so doing, would he be so kind as to suggest the safest mode of conveying it to London? Also, whether it was quite prudent to leave their money in the Bank of France and other French securities, or whether it would be advisable to withdraw it at once at a loss? Also, whether it would be a wise precaution to hang the Union Jack out of the window, those who had furnished apartments in Paris, or whether the present state of feeling between England and France was such as to make such a step rather dangerous than otherwise? It was not for outsiders to know how things stood between the two countries so as to be able to guide their course in the present crisis, but his excellency being a diplomatist was well informed on the subject, and they would rely implicitly on his judgment and advice, etc.

Berthe and I were so highly entertained by the naïve egotism and infantine stupidity displayed by the various specimens of British nature around us, that we did not find it in our hearts to grumble at being kept waiting nearly two hours.

On reaching the Rond Point of the Champs Elysées, our curiosity was attracted by a silent, scared-looking crowd collected on the sidewalk in front of the Hôtel Meyerbeer. The blinds of the house were closed as if there were a death within, and a few _sergents-de-ville_ were standing at intervals with arms crossed, staring up at the windows. The owner of the hotel had been arrested with great noise the night before, on the strength of some foolish words which had escaped him about the possible entry of the Germans into Paris; but we neither of us knew anything of this, and I asked the nearest sergeant if anything had happened. The man turned round, and, without uncrossing his arms, bent two piercing eyes upon me--piercing is not a figure of speech, they literally stabbed us through like a pair of blades--and, after taking a deliberate view of my person from head to foot, he growled out: “Yes, something has happened. A spy has been found!” There was something so diabolical in the tone of his voice and his expression that it terrified me, and I suppose my terror got into my face and gave it a guilty hue, for another _sergent-de-ville_ who had turned round on hearing his colleague speak, strode up to me, and said nothing, but drove another pair of eyes into me with fierce suspicion. The crowd, attracted by the incident, turned round and stared at me, and I felt as if I had that morning posted a despatch to Bismarck or Bismarck’s master betraying every state secret in France. Despair, however, that makes cowards brave, came to my rescue, and, putting a bold face on it, I said, with extraordinary pluck and coolness:

“Has he been arrested?”

“He has.”

“Ah, it is well!” I observed. And in abject fear of being pounced upon there and then, and done equally well by, I walked away.

When we had got to a safe distance, I looked at Berthe. She was as white as ashes. Indeed, if I looked half as guilty, it is nothing short of a miracle that we were not both seized on the spot and carried off to the _Préfecture de Police_.

“Let this be a lesson to us never to speak to any one in the street while things are in this state,” said Berthe. “Indeed, the safest way would be not to speak at all, especially in a foreign language, for whatever they don’t understand they set down as German, and to be a German is of course to be a spy.”

After this we walked on in silence. Evidently Berthe no longer looked on my fears as chimerical or matter for laughter, and, puerile as the incident was, I believe it put an end to my hesitation, and decided me to leave Paris with as little delay as possible. She had not realized as much as I had, but the spy-fever had spread so alarmingly within the last few days that what had first been merely a recurring panic was now a fixed idea that had grown to insanity. You might read suspicion and fear written on the faces of the people as you went along. They walked in twos and threes without speaking, glancing timidly on every side, and trying to carry it off with an air of indifference or preoccupation. Every one was in mortal fear of being pointed at and hooted off to the nearest _poste_. No nationality was safe. A few Englishmen who had fallen victims to the popular mania, and been subjected to a night’s hospitality at the expense of the government, had published their experiences, and described the sort of entertainment prepared for casual visitors, and it was anything but enticing: a _salle_ crammed full of every kind and degree of sinner, from the imaginary spy whipped up on the pavement without proof or witness, to the lowest vagrants of the worst character, all put in for the same offence, and huddled up together without a chair to sit on or air to breathe. Those who were lucky enough to be set free after a short term of durance vile were warmly congratulated by their friends, and retired into private life without further _éclat_. Some English subjects were simple enough to venture a protest against the unceremonious proceeding on the part of the police, and were politely reminded that the gates of the city were still open and trains ready to convey them to many places of more agreeable manners where the sacred person of a British subject ran no risk of being mistaken for a common mortal, but that, while they choose to remain within the gates, they must take the consequences. And this was, after all, the best answer they could make, and it behooved all sensible British subjects to abide by it. I parted from Berthe at the corner of her own street, and went home to pack up and start the next day by the twelve o’clock train.

I stopped on my way to the station to take leave of her. It was near eleven o’clock. Contrary to my expectations, I found her up and dressed, instead of lolling in dishabille on her couch. But this was not the only surprise awaiting me. The whole appearance of the house was changed. The _portières_ and curtains were taken down; the two salons were emptied of their furniture, and four iron beds placed in the large one and two in the small one. A young woman was busy cutting out bandages with a great basket of linen beside her in Berthe’s room--that soft, Sybarite room, so unused to such company and such occupation. Her face was concealed by a broad-frilled Vendean cap, but on hearing us enter she turned round, and I recognized the bride-widow of the Bréton volunteer.

“We are going to work very hard together,” said Berthe, putting her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Jeannette is to teach me to make poultices, and to dress wounds, and to do all kinds of useful things that one wants to know how to do for the wounded. She is quite an adept in the service, it seems, so I hope our little ambulance will be well managed and comfortable for the dear soldiers.”

Jeannette’s eyes filled with tears, and she took Berthe’s hand and kissed it. Just at this moment François came in to say there were some _Sœurs de Charité_ who wanted to speak to madame. Berthe and Jeannette went out to meet them, and as they left the room Antoinette came in through the dressing-room. She threw up her arms when she perceived me, and looked toward the salon with blank despair in her face.

“The world is upside down,” she said, “everything is going topsy-turvy; what between the war, and the siege, and the rest of it, one doesn’t know what to expect next; but of all the queer things going, the queerest is what is happening in this house. To think of _le salon de la comtesse_ being turned into a hospital! That I should live to see such things! Madame does well to go away; people are all going crazy in this country, and they say it’s catching.”

“So it is, Antoinette,” I said, “and the best thing I can wish you is that you may catch it yourself.”

Berthe wanted to come with me to the station, but I would not let her. I preferred to carry away my last impression of her as I saw her now. She was dressed in a plain dark silk, with a white apron before her, and a soft cambric handkerchief tied loosely round her head; the quaint, half-nunlike dress seemed to me to become her more than the most artistic of M. Grandhomme’s combinations, and as I watched her going from room to room with a duster in her hand, changing the chairs and tables, and working as deftly as an accomplished housemaid, her face flushed with the exercise and bright with a new-found joy, I thought I had never seen her look so beautiful. So we parted in that blue chamber that was henceforth to have a new memory of its own to both of us. Before I had started from my own house, the news of Sedan had come in, and spread like wild-fire. All that I had previously witnessed of popular excitement was cold and calm compared with what I beheld on my way to the station. The city was like a galvanized nightmare, electrifying and electrified into hubbub and madness. Rage and despair were riding the whirlwind with suspicion tied like a bandage on their eyes. The cry of _Treason!_ out-topped all other cries; every man suspected his brother and accused him; the air was filled with curses and threats, and there was no voice strong enough to rise above the popular tumult and subdue it. If there had been, what might not have come of it? If at that moment there had been a voice loud enough to speak to the hurricane, and compel those millions of tongues to be silent and listen to the truth, and then gather them into one great voice that would lift itself up in a unit of harmony and power that would have been heard, not only to the ends of Paris, but to the ends of France, What might not have been done? what might not have been saved? But it was not to be. Nothing came of the discord but discord. The strong hand that might even then have welded all these suicidal elements of hate, and fury, and suspicion into a vigorous bond of action was not forthcoming; the strife was to go on to the bitter end, till the soil of fair France was drenched with blood, and all her energies spent, and her youth and chivalry laid low in bootless butchery.

The blocks that stopped our progress in every street made it a difficult matter to get to the railway, and when we eventually did get there we were a quarter of an hour behind our time. But, as it happened, this was of no consequence; we had to wait another hour before the train started. Meantime the confusion was indescribable. Several wagons full of wounded had arrived by the last train, and a regiment of the line was waiting to start by the next. The Place was filled with soldiers, some were lying at full length fast asleep under the hot noon sun, others were smoking and chatting near their arms that were stacked here and there; some of the poor fellows had been out before, and were only just recovering from their wounds; they looked worn and weak as if hardly able to bear themselves; women were clinging to them, weeping and lamenting; inside the station, travellers were rushing frantically from bureau to bureau; then in despair at ever getting through the crowd that besieged every wicket, they would seize some unlucky porter with a band on his hat, and implore him in heart-rending tones to help them to a ticket, and, when he protested that such a service was not in his power they would belabor him vindictively with hard words, and make another rush at the bureau.

At last we were off. It was an exciting journey, such as I hope never to make again. The lines were encumbered with trains full of wounded coming and troops going, and our pace was regulated with a view to avoid running into those ahead or being run into by those behind. Now we darted on at a terrific speed, the engine wriggling from rail to rail like a snake gone mad; then we would pull up spasmodically and crawl almost at a foot-pace, then off we flew again like a telegram. Trains flashed past us on either side every now and then with a tremendous roar, and soldiers sang out snatches of war-songs, and we cheered them and waved hands and handkerchiefs to them in return. We had started an hour and a quarter behind our time, and we arrived three hours after we were due. For two hours before we reached Boulogne, the danger lights were flashing ahead, red and lurid in the darkness, and it was with something like the feeling of being rescued from a house on fire that we set foot at last on the platform. Once in safety, I was able to look back more calmly on the history of the last fortnight. It seemed to me that I had been standing on a rock, watching the tide roll in, creeping gradually higher and nearer to my standpoint till I felt the cold touch of the water on my feet, and leaped ashore.

And Berthe? She stood out like a bright star transfiguring the dense darkness of the picture. The change I had witnessed in her appeared to me like the promise of other changes, wider, deeper, universal. I had ceased to wonder at the choice she had made; the more I thought of it, the more I felt that she was worthy of it as it was of her, and the only wish I could form for her now was, that she might be strong to persevere unto the end. The course she had adopted was the noblest and the only true one for a Frenchwoman while France was suffering, and struggling, and bleeding to death. While the war-cry and the battle psalm were clanging around, it was not meant for the women of France to sit idly in luxurious ease, and watch the death-struggle of the nation in indifference or mere passive sympathy. We may none of us stand aloof from our brethren in such a crisis, or take refuge in cowardly neutrality. Neutrality in the brotherhood of Freedom is desertion, treachery. We have each our appointed post in the battle, and we cannot desert it without being traitors. We must all fight somehow. Not of necessity with iron or steel, but we must fight. Moses had neither bow nor arrow nor javelin when he got up on the mountain and watched with uplifted arms the conflict in the valley below, but yet he was not neutral. So to the end of time it must be with all of us. We must fight somehow; we may never abide in selfish peace or a sense of isolated security while the brethren around are at war; whithersoever the battle goes, to victory or defeat, to glory or humiliation, we must take our share in it, and let our hearts go on fighting faithfully to the end. We must love the combatants through good and evil alike; through the smoke and din we must discern every ennobling incident of the struggle, such as there abounds on every battle-field in every land, seeing all things in their true proportions, shutting our hearts inexorably to despair, making them wide to endless sympathy with the good, to inexhaustible pity for the wicked. The smoke must not blind us; the crash and the roar must not deafen us; through the agony of souls, despair, and hate, and sin, we must have our vision clear and strong to recognize the loveliness of virtue, the divine beauty of sacrifice, the infinite possibilities of repentance, the joy of the conquerors, the sweetness of the kiss of peace. Loving all love. Hating all hate. We must see angels outnumbering fiends in incalculable degree, light triumphing over darkness, and the breath of purity healing the blue corruption of the world.

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE CLERKE OF OXENFORDE.

At his beddes hed
Twenty bokes clothed in blake or red,
Of Aristotle and his philosophie,
Than robes riche, fidel or sautrie,
For al be that he was a philosopher
Yet hadde he but litel gold in coffer,
And all that he might of his frendes hente
On bokes and on learning he it spente,
And besily gan for the soules praie
Of them that gave him wherewith to scholaie.
--_Chaucer._

A BAD BEGINNING FOR A SAINT;

OR, THE EARLY LIFE OF FATHER CHAUMONOT, A CELEBRATED MISSIONARY IN CANADA.

Lives of saints are somewhat discouraging reading at times to poor mortals, who feel that they have a good deal of human nature in them, and that somehow human nature is more disposed to play the part of mistress than of handmaiden to grace.

These holy souls seem from the cradle so innocent, so faithful, that they appear a higher creation than ourselves, and accordingly it is no less consoling than encouraging at times to find early shortcomings overcome by a tardy fidelity to grace, and sanctity attained.

In the early annals of Canada, there are few names more revered than that of Father Peter Mary Joseph Chaumonot, whose impassioned eloquence gathered round him at Onondaga the braves and sachems of the Iroquois, wondering to hear their unlabial language flow so smoothly from the lips of a white man--who founded at Montreal the Society of the Holy Family, which has been such a potent instrument in maintaining in Canadian homes the true family spirit of Catholicity and devotion--and who founded near Quebec a new Loretto in this Western world for the Huron Indians, whom he so long directed and guided, after he saw himself deprived of the martyr’s crown which so many of his fellow-laborers won near the shores of Lake Huron.

Yet good Father Chaumonot, we are sorry to say, began life as a young scamp; and to encourage those who sometimes despair of _mauvais sujets_ whom Providence has placed under their charge, we will give the story of his early years in Chaumonot’s own inimitable language. Late in life, by command of his superiors, he wrote an autobiographical account, and from it we extract:

“For my father I had a poor vine-dresser and for mother a poor schoolmaster’s daughter. At the age of six, they placed me with my grandfather, five or six leagues from our village, that I might learn to read and write. They then took me home, but only for a short time, one of my uncles, a priest residing at Châtillon-sur-Seine, having had the kindness to take me to his house, so that I might study in the college in that place.

“When I had made some progress in Latin, my uncle wished me to learn plain chant, under one of my class who was a musician. This fellow persuaded me to leave Châtillon and follow him to Beaune, where we were to study under the Fathers of the Oratory. As I did not wish to undertake this journey without funds, I stole about a hundred sous from my uncle while he was in the church. With this we took flight.

“We travelled by by-ways to Dijon, whence we made our way to Beaune. There we put up with a townsman, but as my finances were short, I wrote to ask my mother to have the goodness to supply me with money and clothes, so that I might pursue my studies at Beaune, where I hoped to make more rapid progress than at Châtillon. The letter fell into my father’s hands, and he answered me that he would send me nothing; that I must return; and that he would make peace with my uncle for me.

“This reply filled me with dismay. To return to my uncle was to expose myself to be pointed at as a thief, and yet to stay any longer at Beaune was out of the question. So I resolved to run around the world as a vagabond, rather than bear the shame my rascality deserved. I started from Beaune with the intention of going to Rome, though I had not a sou or a change. I travelled alone for half a day; then I fell in with two young men of Lorraine, who saluted me and asked me whither I was going. “To Rome,” quoth I, “to gain the pardons.” They applauded my design, and entertained me with the object of their own journey to Lyons.

“Meanwhile I was thinking what was to become of me, and what I was to live on, if I continued my journey. Begging was in my ideas too degrading, I could not bring myself to work for my living, and there was little chance of my doing it, for I was unaccustomed to labor and knew no trade. Fortunately, my two Lorrainers, who were no better stocked with money than I was, began to beg from door to door in the first town we came to. Who was dumfounded to see them ply this trade? Myself, who, after some deliberation, concluded to imitate them rather than starve, so powerfully had their example made easy what had previously appeared impossible. Such was my apprenticeship as a beggar, but as I was only a beginner at the trade, I gained but a wretched livelihood. However, I flattered myself that on reaching a city so large as Lyons, some good fortune would turn up. But, alas! I was astonished to find myself arrested by the sentinels, who let my companions pass on account of their passports, and detained me because I had none.

“I did not know what was to become of me, or even where I was to get shelter. I saw many large buildings, but I durst not ask the least corner there to pass the night in. At last, spying a wretched shed opposite a glass furnace, I crept under it. Would to heaven I had then had sense enough to take my sufferings as an expiation of my sins, and united my poverty to that of my Saviour lying in a stable!

“Next morning, seeing at the river-side a boat where people were embarking to cross the Rhone, I begged the boatman to give me a passage out of charity. This he did, because in fact the city paid him to carry beyond the river all the beggars who were refused entrance into the city.

“When I got to the other side, I met a young man who promised to make the tour to Italy with me.

“We had just started off together when we met a priest returning from Rome. He did his best to persuade us to forego our projected pilgrimage and return home. Among other reasons, he told us that our want of passports would prevent our getting entrance into any city on our way. I asked him whether he had one, and he had no sooner shown it to me than I begged him to allow me to make a copy of it, which I did on the spot, inserting my own name and my companion’s instead of his.

“Oh! why did I not then offer to God the hardships of nakedness, fatigue, heat, cold, and the thousand other miseries I suffered on that journey! I should have had the happiness of drawing down upon me the blessings of heaven. Our common Father would not have refused them to me, beholding in me some traits of the poverty and sufferings of his Son, but alas! my pride and other sins, which rendered me more like the devil than I was to our Lord by my poverty, were great obstacles to grace in me. Yet, O my God! thou hadst thy views in permitting me to commit fault on fault, folly on folly! Thou didst deign to set me free from all inordinate love to my parents, which, had I remained always with them, would have prevented my consecrating myself entirely to thee. Thou didst design that when I grew up the remembrance of my trials should make me sympathize with more love and gratitude in the sufferings of thy Son.

“But I should be tedious were I to recount all the faults I committed, and all the miseries that befel me on my way. I shall give only the principal adventures.

“The first that occurs to my mind is that, when in Savoy, I entered the court of our college at Chambéry, where I asked in Latin for alms. One of the fathers was so touched at my wretched state that he gave me supper, and even promised to take me back to Lyons, whither he was about to go, and send me from that point to Châtillon. At first I thanked him as well as I could, and promised to follow him, but as soon as he left me I took flight, my money always terrifying me from the thought of returning to my parents. Was I not out of my senses, and did I not well deserve all the evils that befel me, when I refused such kind offers for my own quiet, and the comfort of my poor family? How deplorable was the blindness of my proud spirit, to choose to face countless dangers and hardships, rather than undergo a wholesome reprimand!

“In a village in Savoy we met a good parish priest, who took us to his house, and, after giving us supper, allowed us to sleep on the bed of his servant, whom he had sent to Chambéry. This gentleman slept in a room over his valet’s, which was entered by a ladder, at the top of which was a trap-door, which our host neglected to close properly, so that about midnight a cat pursuing her prey threw it down. The noise was sufficient to awake the priest, who imagined that we were trying to enter his room for no good purpose. So he jumped out of bed and, attired as he was, rushed out on a balcony, crying Murder! murder! murder! at the top of his voice. No less alarmed, I ran up the ladder and reassured him by explaining the innocent cause of all the trouble. Fortunately for us, the neighbors were not awakened by their pastor’s voice.

“Here is another adventure where we ran greater risk. In a town in the Valteline we found a French garrison reduced to a very small number of soldiers, so that the officers urged us strongly to enlist. I would have consented to get my bread every day in this manner, in the hunger I suffered, but my wiser comrade would hear nothing of it. All they got from us was our consent to await the arrival of the commissary, who was daily expected. They led us to hope that we should receive the same pay as real soldiers. Meanwhile, they wished to see what figure we would cut on parade. It was easy enough to travesty into a soldier my comrade, who was a big fellow; but as I appeared a mere boy, from my youth and small body, there was some difficulty in finding a sword to suit me. That which they judged best suited to my size had an eel or snake skin scabbard, and for want of belt or baldric they tied it around with an ass’ halter. I appeared so ridiculous in this that they resolved to put me to bed as sick when the commissary came. While awaiting that event, we lived on the king’s bread, and my comrade was in a constant shiver lest we should be regarded as interlopers or be detained there in spite of ourselves. He made the danger out so great that I yielded to his urging. Bent on pursuing our pilgrimage to Rome, we started one fine morning, but had not travelled more than a mile and a half when we were arrested by some soldiers, who had orders to seize all deserters they found and take them back to their officers. ‘Alas!’ I cried with tears, ‘have I the look of a military man? I am a poor student, who has taken a vow to go to Rome.’ So pathetic was my accent that it touched them, and they let us go. If God had not given them compassion for us, what would have become of us? He saved us from another danger after we had entered Italy.

“Towards nightfall we reached a hostelry by the roadside, where we proposed to sleep, but we counted without our host. We had scarcely eaten our wretched supper, which he made us pay for as dearly as he wished, when, in spite of all our demands that he would at least give us shelter in one of his stables, he barbarously drove us out. It would not have been so bad could we have slept by the light of the stars, but there were none, and the weather, which was overcast, soon poured down on us a drenching rain. Our clothes were all soaked, and, to cap the climax, the road was full of holes and ditches that we did not see, so that we made almost as many tumbles as steps.

“We were well-nigh used up when a gleam of light enabled us to make out a stable. As we crawled towards it, we found a great stack of straw quite near it. We climbed up on it and made a hole in the top to creep in. As we were chilled through, especially our feet, we put them under each other’s arm-pits, lying so that my head was opposite my companion’s. We were just beginning to get warm when some large dogs, scenting us, came running up barking furiously. At this noise the people ran out of the farm-house and tried to drive us off with stones. This new kind of hail did not suffer us to remain in our quarters, and fear of the dogs prevented our leaving them. I then thought it high time to speak, and my skill in getting up tears served my turn here as it had already done in getting us off when arrested as deserters. So I began to shout out in Latin: _Nos sumus pauperes peregrini_. As the last word is Italian also, it informed these good people who we were. They took pity on us, called off their dogs, and left us to pass the rest of the night in peace.

“After many hardships and sufferings we reached Ancona. Alas! who can express the wretched condition to which my vagabond life had reduced me! From head to foot, everything about me inspired horror. I was barefooted, having been obliged to throw away my shoes, which were broken and galled me. My shirt was rotting, my tattered clothes swarmed with vermin, my uncombed head was filled with so horrible a disease that it swarmed with worms and matter of most loathsome stench.... It was only at Ancona that I was aware of the extent of this disease, when on scratching it I found a worm on my hand. At the sight of this my consternation was unspeakable. ‘Must I, then,’ I said to myself, ‘in punishment of my villanies, be eaten alive by worms and vermin? I no longer wonder that when I take off my hat before people, they show wonder and horror at the sight. What is to become of me? Am I not a sickening sight to all the world? O sad chastisement of my pride!’

“After all, I resumed courage as I approached the Holy House of Loretto. Perhaps the Blessed Virgin, who performs so many miracles in this sacred spot in favor of the wretched, will take pity on my misery! Ah! why had I not then the knowledge I subsequently acquired of the wonders wrought by her in that sanctuary in favor of soul and body? I should have had a far different confidence in her power and goodness!

“Although I invoked her coldly enough, she showed me that, independently of our merit and disposition, she is pleased to exercise towards us the duties of a real mother; and as one of these duties is to see to the cleanliness of their children, thou didst regard me in that light, O Blessed Virgin! unworthy as I was and am to be adopted by thee as thy son. Thou didst inspire a young man whom I was never able to discover with the will and power to heal my head. Thou knowest better than I how it was accomplished. Yet I will not omit in token of gratitude to set down what I know.

“On leaving the Holy House of Mary, an unknown person, who seemed to be a young man and who was perhaps an angel, said to me with an air and tone of pity: ‘My dear boy, what a wretched head you have! Come, follow me, I will try to apply some remedy.’ I followed him: he took me outside the church, behind a large pillar, where no one passed. Having reached this retired spot, he made me sit down, and bade me remove my hat. I obeyed. He cut off all my hair with scissors, rubbed my poor head with a white cloth, and, without my feeling any pain, entirely removed all trace of the disease and its hideous accompaniments. He then put my hat on again. I thanked him for his charity; he left me, and I am yet to see a better physician or experience a more wretched disease.

“If the least lady had done me this service by her lowest valet, should I not render her all possible thanks? And if, after such a charity, she had offered always to serve me in the same way, how should I not feel bound to honor, obey, and love her all my life! Pardon, Queen of angels and of men! pardon me, that after receiving from thee so many marks convincing me that thou hast adopted me as thy son, I have been so ungrateful as for whole years to act more as a slave of Satan than the child of a Virgin Mother. Oh! how good and charitable art thou, since, in spite of the obstacles my sins have raised to thy graces, thou hast never ceased to draw me towards good; till thou hast caused me to be admitted into the holy Society of Jesus, thy Son.

“My comrade and I resumed the road to Rome, after spending three days at Loretto; but God stopped me at Terni, in Umbria, to change my beggar life for a place as valet. I was begging from door to door as usual, when a venerable old man, a doctor of laws, invited me to stay with him to attend him in the house and accompany him to town. I was so weary of my beggar’s trade that I readily accepted the citizen’s offer to become his lackey; I even did the lowest tasks, for there was nothing that did not seem sweet and honorable compared to the hardships and humiliations which had made me loathe my mendicant life.

“I had been some time at Terni, but as I had not picked up enough Italian to confess in that language, I made my confession in Latin to a father of the Society of Jesus. After my confession, he questioned me as to my studies. I told him that I was in rhetoric when I allowed myself to be led astray. He manifested the regret he felt to see me reduced to so low a condition after starting so well in my education. He urged me to resume my studies; and to facilitate this he proposed, if I chose, to have me received into the college, where I would advance in science and virtue. I took his proposal ill, imagining he wished to make a Jesuit of me; but in the sequel I had every reason to believe that this wise religious merely wished to give me at first the place of a young secular who taught the lowest class in the college. Would to God I had then commenced to do so! How many sins I should have avoided! I did indeed go two days after to see the father and remind him of it, but as I did not know his name, I was stupid enough to ask for ‘the father who heard my confession.’ The scholars in the college yard to whom I put this question roared at my folly, and that was enough to send me back quicker than I came. However, I asked the doctor whom I served what kind of people the Jesuits were. He answered me carelessly that they received only persons of rank and talent, that their order was less austere than others, and that you could leave it even after taking the vows. These last traits with which he described them did not displease me. I would willingly have entered among them for a time. I was not yet fit for the kingdom of God, as I looked behind me before putting my hand to the plough.

“As I began to understand Italian, I read devotional books in that language, and among the rest one, _The Lives of the Fathers of the Desert_, inspired me with the desire of becoming a hermit. Thereupon, without consulting any one, I left my master’s house with the view of going to bury myself in some wilderness in France after I had visited Rome.