Chapter VIII: Faith And Science Of Progress (4)

The bishops are appointed by the czar, and transferred, promoted, degraded, imprisoned, knouted, or put to death at the imperial pleasure. Until very recently, no bishop could leave his diocese without the permission of the synod, so that consultations among the episcopacy were, of course, impossible. Now, however, a bishop may absent himself for eight days, on giving notice to the synod. It is the synod at St. Petersburg that exercises, under the czar, the whole ecclesiastical authority of the empire. The bishop has no power, and nothing to do but to sign reports. All the business of his diocese is really transacted by a lay secretary, appointed not by the bishop, but by the synod. Under the secretary is a chancery of six or seven chief clerks, with assistant clerks and writers. This office superintends all the affairs of the clergy, and transacts no business without drink‐money. It is the most venal and rapacious of all Russian bureaus, and such a mine of wealth to the officials that recently, when the chancery of a certain town was abolished on account of the destruction of its buildings by fire, the employees petitioned to be allowed to restore them at their own expense. The secretary is the one all‐powerful person of the diocese. From 12,000 to 15,000 files of documents are referred to the chancery every year for decision, and it is he who passes upon them, asking nothing of the bishop except his signature. He is almost invariably corrupt, and as he possesses, through his relations with the synod, the power to ruin the bishop if he chooses, there is no one to interfere with him.

The synod consists of the metropolitan of St. Petersburg and a number of other bishops chosen by the czar and changed every now and then, and of two or three secular priests, one of whom is the czar’s chaplain, and another the chief chaplain of the army and navy. But in reality, the whole power of the synod is held by an imperial procurator, who sits in the assembly, watches all its proceedings, stops deliberations whenever he sees fit, is the intermediary between the church and the state, and formulates decisions for the signature of the synod. Most of these decisions are signed without reading, and sometimes they are made to express the direct contrary of the sense of the assembly. The procurator, in a word, is to the synod what the secretary is to the bishop—the representative of the civil power ruling the enslaved and submissive church. The czar speaks through the procurator, the procurator speaks through the lay secretaries of the bishop, and so the church is governed practically without troubling the clergy at all.

The “Old Catholics” of Germany, and the new and improved Catholics who are (perhaps) going to be made under the patent of Father Hyacinthe and wife, are understood to be looking eagerly for connections in various parts of the world. Let them by all means go to Russia. They will see there how much liberty a church gains when it cuts itself off from its obedience to the See of Peter, and what kind of a clergy is constructed when men try to improve upon the models of Almighty God.

The Cross Through Love, And Love Through The Cross.

Maheleth Cristalar was the daughter of a Spanish Jew. Her father had once been very wealthy, and indeed until the age of sixteen she had lived in princely splendor. The beauties of her Spanish home were very dear to her; she had many friends, and as much time as she chose to spend in study.

But one day, her mother, a stately, handsome matron, came into her little sitting‐room, looking pale and worn.

“Maheleth, my child,” she began, in faltering tones, “we have had some bad news this morning. I am afraid we are in danger of being totally ruined.”

The young girl looked up; she was very beautiful, and the spiritual expression on her face intensified and heightened her beauty in a singular degree.

“Ruined, dear mother? Is my father very unhappy about it?”

“He is more angry than unhappy; it has happened through the dishonesty of persons he trusted.”

“Shall we have to leave home?” asked Maheleth.

“I fear we shall; it is a heavy trial.”

“It will be for our good in the end, mother darling. I am so sorry for you and my father, because you have always been used to riches.”

“So have you, my poor child.”

“But not for so long a time; and it is easier to root up a sapling than a full‐grown tree.”

“Ah! you hardly know what may be before you, Maheleth; your sisters are mere children; we have but few relations; with fortune, so also friends will forsake us; the shock will be very sudden, and we shall have to bear it alone.”

“You forget our God,” said the girl gently.

A shade of impatience passed over the elder woman’s face.

“We do not hope for miracles now, child,” she answered; “your father has worked hard for his wealth, but God will not treat him as he treated Job.”

“Depend upon it, if he does not, mother mine, it is because he knows what is best for us. You would not have us lose our hopes of the hereafter for the sake of more or less comfort in the earthly present?”

“My child, you should have been a boy; such sayings would tell well in a sermon, but in practical business matters they are but cold comfort.”

“Oh! they _are_ comfort sufficient, believe me; besides, they do not debar us from prudent measures and precautions in a temporal point of view.”

“Well, child, you are a visionary, I always knew that; it remains to be seen if you can be a stoic.”

“What need of that, dear mother? Stoicism is not obedience nor resignation.”

Here a light step was heard, and the half‐open door was pushed quickly back. A little girl, about nine years old, ran in with flushed face, and, holding in her hands a velvet casket, cried out in gleeful voice:

“O mother! sister! see! I got leave to bring this in myself. It has just come from the jeweller’s, just as my father ordered it!”

And she opened the casket, displaying a wonderful _parure_ of opals and diamonds, exquisitely and artistically wrought. Señora Cristalar turned away impatiently, saying to the child:

“Thamar, I am engaged; don’t come fooling here about these jewels; put them down, and go into the next room.”

The child, hurt and astonished, looked blankly at her sister. Maheleth reached out her hand for the casket, and half rose from her seat.

“I will come to you presently, little sister, if you wait in there; never mind the pretty gems just now.”

And so saying, she kissed the little eyes that were ready to overflow with childish tears, and, setting the jewels on a table out of sight of her mother, resumed her seat.

“There are the first‐fruits of our circumstances,” said the mother bitterly. “The man expects to be paid for those to‐day, and I shall have to tell him to take them back!”

“Come! if there were nothing worse than that! Now, mother, we will both go to my father, and pray together, and then consult among ourselves.”

Maheleth’s father was very fond and very proud of his eldest daughter, and this indeed was his best trait. Shrewd and clever in worldly affairs, yet strictly honest in his dealings, he was not devoid of that hardness that too often accompanies mercantile success, and as often turns to weakness when that success disappears.

One thing seemed to sustain him, but it was only a hollow prop after all—his pride of race. For generations his family had been well known and honored: he could trace his ancestry back in an unbroken line of descent from one of the exiles from devastated Jerusalem. Rabbis and learned men had borne his name, and though in later times no opening save that of trade and banking had been available to those of his race, yet his blood yielded it in nothing to that of the proverbially haughty nobles of Spain. It mattered little that by some he was shunned as of an inferior extraction or lower social status; his own wealth, his wife’s beauty, his lavish hospitality, his daughter’s charms, were strong enough, he knew, to break the barriers of prejudice, at least as far as appearances went. As to marriages, he did not covet for his children the alliance of a poor foreigner, and poor most of the proud families were whom he daily entertained at his splendid house—poor in brains, poor in beauty, poor in energy and strong will.

And yet, though he almost despised his neighbors, this shock was very galling to him. _They_ now would turn from him, would forget his open‐ handedness, and remember only his race and creed; would pity him perhaps, but with the pity that is almost contempt. And this seemed to paralyze him, for all his fiercely expressed consciousness of superiority to his friends.

Maheleth tried to persuade him to take the trial calmly; for even in a temporal aspect calmness would sooner show him how to retrieve his fortunes.

“For,” she said, “you know that, with your abilities, you can, if you will, gain enough for my little sisters’ dowry by the time they will be grown up; and that is the first thing to be considered, and after that we shall even have enough to live in comfort.”

“And what is to become of you, Maheleth?” asked her father fondly.

“Oh! you and I will be co‐workers. I will look after those two until you can marry them well, and so we will both have a definite object in life. We can keep my mother in some degree of comfort from the very beginning, if we only look things in the face.”

The opals and diamonds had to be returned to the jeweller’s; the pleasant home was broken up, and what with the sale of his property, and various other legal arrangements, Ephraim Cristaler was able to pay all his creditors, with a few trifling exceptions, for which he bound himself by solemn promise to provide shortly.

Then the banker and merchant disappeared, and the nine days’ wonder was forgotten by his former circle of acquaintances.

One day, a young Englishman, travelling or rather sauntering about Europe in a way unlike the usual useless rush of tourists from one point to another of Murray’s _Guide‐Book_, arrived at Frankfort and settled there—for how long, he, least of all, could have told.

At the hotel, nothing was known of him but his name, Henry Holcombe, and that he had come with a black portmanteau containing a number of books. He went slowly to see the sights, one by one, as if he had plenty of leisure and wanted to enjoy it; and, when he _did_ go, he never measured the length and breadth of saloons, the height of towers, the number of statues in the cathedral‐niches; nor did he ever disgrace his name by carving it side by side with the ambitious Joneses or the heaven‐soaring Smiths on the pinnacle of a temple, or the bark supports of a summer‐house; when he went out with a book in his hand, it was neither the obtrusive _Murray_ nor the ostentatious _Byron_; and, in fact, he departed altogether from the standard of the regulation British tourist.

He was walking one day down the _Juden‐Strasse_, the picturesqueness of whose mediæval‐looking houses had a special attraction for him, when it came on to rain very suddenly, and the sky seemed to threaten a storm in good earnest; the street was soon deserted, and the narrow roadway became a miniature stream. Presently he heard a step behind him, and a slight figure, half‐hidden by a large umbrella, pressed quickly past him. It was a woman, and, he thought, a very young one, but more than that he could not tell, because she was veiled and muffled, and held the dripping umbrella very close down upon her head. She had not gone a dozen paces beyond him before she dropped something white like a roll of music, and stooped slowly to pick it up. The cloak and long skirt she was holding fast to keep them from the mud embarrassed her, and the young Englishman had time to spring forward and restore the white roll of paper to her hand before she had grasped it.

“Oh! thank you, _mein Herr_!” said a low, rich voice, in very soft German. And, as Henry took off his hat in silence, the girl made a pretty sweeping inclination, and left him, walking as quickly as before.

But he had seen more this time, and he knew she was beautiful, and had a dainty, graceful hand. Curious and interested, he watched the dark‐clad figure down the street, quickened his own steps as it hastened on, slackened them as it paused to clear a crossing without splashing the long and rather inconvenient garments. He saw it stop at last, and ring a bell at an old forlorn‐looking door, where he might have expected to see the face of a gnome appear, as guardian of unsuspected treasures within.

He was dreadfully romantic, this young Englishman, but in a subdued, quiet way that seldom showed itself in words, and was specially repelled by the _gushing_ style too much followed just then by some of his fair countrywomen.

The door was opened and shut, and, except through his notice of the number over it, 25, his relation with the beautiful stranger was cut off.

He thought of it day after day, got a directory, and found out that in the house No. 25 there lived three families of the names of Zimmermann, Krummacher, and Löwenberg. The occupations of the heads of the families were given thus: “money‐lender,” “banking‐clerk,” and “lace‐merchant,” respectively; no clue whatsoever, of course; and, unless in a regular and received manner, Mr. Holcombe could not think of entering the house. Still, the face he had seen veiled under the prosaic tent of a wet umbrella kept between him and his thoughts, and would not be driven away. Then, too, what business was it of his to go and throw himself in the way of a girl who most likely was a Jewess? Yet, reason as he might, the mysterious face _would_ visit him, and it seemed to him as the face of an angel. Very often he passed the house, and once or twice even made a pretence of sketching it; but he never saw the figure again. Once a young face looked out over the flowers in the window of the ground‐floor room, a merry face full of health and mischief—not _his_ dream. The blinds were always drawn on the first floor, even when the windows were open, and he began to fancy _she_ must be hidden behind those discreet shrouders of privacy. A friend of his met him at his hotel one day when he came home from the _Juden‐Strasse_, and surprised him by telling him he was going home in a fortnight to get married.

“I’ve been half over the world, my dear fellow,” he said, “and enjoyed myself immensely. And I’ve got such a pile of things going home to my _fiancée_, for our house. She _will_ be delighted, she is so fond of queer, foreign things, not like what other people have, you know. I’ll show you some, but most are gone in packing cases through agents from the different parts of the world I’ve been in.”

And the two young men went upstairs to examine the bridal gifts.

“Look here,” said Ellice to his quieter friend, “it was a pasha’s wife sent me these,” dragging out a handful of Eastern jewelry, golden fillets, and embroidered jackets and slippers. “A cousin of mine is the wife of the consul at Smyrna, and she got them for me, for of course I was not allowed to go near the Eastern lady! And look here, these are carved shells, and mother‐of‐pearl crucifixes from Jerusalem, and boxes made from Olivet trees and cedars of Lebanon; you should value those.”

“I hope your future wife will,” gravely said young Holcombe; “the wood of the olives of Gethsemani is almost a relic in itself.”

“Oh! Miss Kenneth will appreciate them just as much as you do, Holcombe, she is very reverential. See, here is some alabaster, Naples coral, and Byzantine manuscripts, and marble ornaments from the Parthenon. Ah! here is the filigree silver of Genoa; that is one of my last purchases, except these pictures on china from Geneva; see the frames, too, they are Swiss.”

Then he turned out a huge tiger‐skin, and said: “All my Indian things except this were sent from Bombay, and a year ago I sent home all kinds of jolly things from North America—furs and skins, antlers, and other curiosities. By the bye, I have some old _point_ from Venice, but some people had been there before me and cleaned the shop out pretty nearly, so I shall have to get some more. Belgium is a good place, isn’t it?”

Holcombe looked thoughtful; his truant mind was at No. 25 again, and he did not answer. His friend went on:

“I’ll just ask the landlady, she’ll be likely to know if there is any place here, just for a souvenir of Frankfort.”

“Yes,” said Holcombe, “I suppose she knows.” And, as he spoke, the phantom face was directly in his mind’s eye, and he could not drive the vision away.

“And now, old fellow, suppose you show me the lions here,” said Ellice; “you have been here longer than I have.”

So they walked out, and of course in due time came to the high, irregular houses bordering the curious _Juden‐Strasse_. It was Friday evening, and the street was full of people hurrying to one spot; the air was balmy, and told of summer; the scene was very striking. The stream of people disappeared under the archway of a splendid Moorish‐looking building, with Hebrew characters carved above the portal. It was the new synagogue. The two friends followed the men; the women were lost to view in the stair‐ cases leading to the galleries. A gorgeous lattice‐work defended these galleries, and the assemblage in the main part of the temple were men with their hats on and light veils or shawls across their shoulders.

The service began; low, plaintive chants resounded through the building; sometimes the congregation joined. It was very solemn, and Henry Holcombe seemed fascinated. Some one passed him a book and found the place for him. And now came the prayer for the mourners, the mourner’s _Kaddisch_, as he saw it printed before his eyes. There was a stir among the people, and he could hear the women’s clothes rustling in the gallery. Those who had recently lost friends and relations stood up during the intercession, and then another prayer was offered up in German. Holcombe thought the sound of the old Hebrew was like the passing of water through a narrow rocky channel; it was soothing and flowing, sad and majestic, and he wondered if the girl he had seen once thought and felt about it as he did.

When the crowd dispersed, he tried to linger at the entrance, watching the women as they passed out. His friend was hardly so patient, and reminded him of the _table d’hôte_ they had most likely already missed.

“I am afraid,” he said, “your people would scarcely approve your admiration of the pretty Jewesses.”

Holcombe blushed and moved away, and, just as he came out on the sidewalk, a girl in black passed him slowly, with an anxious, absent look.

“By jove! that _is_ a pretty face!” exclaimed Ellice; but the other said nothing. For the second time, he had seen the face he was always dreaming of, “She looks like an angel,” he thought, “and yet she is not even a Christian.”

“I never saw a German Jewess like that,” his friend went on to say. “She looks like a Spaniard.”

The next day, Ellice had got an address written down, and said to Holcombe:

“If you care to go with me, we will go and look after this lace‐merchant this morning.”

Holcombe’s heart gave a great throb as he asked carelessly to see the address: “Jacob Zimmermann, 25 _Juden‐Strasse_.”

“I don’t know much about laces,” he answered, “but I will go with pleasure.”

“It feels like going on an adventure, like something you read of in a book,” said Ellice, “this penetrating into the privacy of those tumble‐ down dens of the _Juden‐Strasse_.”

“Well,” returned Holcombe quietly, “it does give one the idea.”

They rang at the door No. 25, and the merry, mischievous face he had seen once at the window greeted Henry as he entered. They inquired for Herr Zimmermann.

“Oh!” said the girl, laughing and looking astonished, “he is up on the third floor. Shall I show you the way? But he is ill, and, as he lives all alone, he has got into very queer ways.”

They went up, guided by the laughing girl, who rattled on as she preceded them.

“Gentlemen like you most often inquire for _us_, for my father, I mean, and no one ever comes to see old Zimmermann except some wrinkled old ladies, and heaven knows how they find him out; and as to Herr Löwenberg, he is a stranger and has no friends.”

The two young men then knew that she was the money‐lender’s daughter, and Holcombe thought his dream companion must bear the name of Löwenberg.

“But is not Zimmermann a rich old merchant, and is he not well‐known in the town?” asked Ellice. “My landlady named him at once when I asked for laces.”

“Oh! yes; _rich_ he is; so rich he won’t sell generally; but then an Englishman is another thing! He lives like a rat in a hole, and starves himself.”

By this time, they had reached the door of the miser’s room; a low, subdued voice was heard within reading.

Their knock was answered by a noise of light footsteps, and the door was drawn ajar by some one inside.

“Rachel, what is it? You know Herr Zimmermann is ill.”

Holcombe knew that voice _must_ belong to the girl he had never forgotten. Just then the light from the door fell upon the men in the darkened, narrow passage, and the slight figure drew back a little.

“They are English gentlemen,” said Rachel. “They want to buy.”

“_To‐day_, Rachel? It is the Sabbath.”

Rachel shrugged her shoulders, and Ellice stepped forward.

“I beg your pardon. I forgot that. But since we are here, perhaps you will let us _see_ the laces, and we can come back and choose on Monday.”

The girl looked uneasily back into the room, and then said, in a very low voice:

“No; please do not ask to come in to‐day; he is hardly conscious, and he might forget it was the Sabbath in his excitement.”

“Very well,” said Ellice politely, and Holcombe whispered to him: “Come away; don’t you understand?”

The door was closed gently, and Henry said:

“She was afraid he could not resist the temptation of a good offer, if it were made to him, and she wanted to prevent his doing anything wrong.”

“How stupid I am!” said Ellice. “Of course that’s it. But, I say, is she not pretty?”

“Beautiful!” answered Holcombe very quietly.

“Is that Fraulein Zimmermann?” asked Ellice of Rachel.

“No; Fraulein Löwenberg,” said the girl. “She is very kind to the old man. Her own father is ill and can’t work, and she is very good to him. She reads to old Zimmermann, and looks after him, too, when he is ill. She has two little sisters also.”

“And how do they live?” asked Ellice.

“_She_ keeps them, I think. The father used to be clerk in Hauptmann’s bank; but he has been laid up six months now, and the mother died two months after they came here.”

“Are they Germans?” said Ellice, really interested.

“Their name is, but I fancy they are foreigners. Maheleth speaks like a foreigner.”

“Maheleth! A curious name.”

“Yes, an unusual one; so is her sister’s—Thamar.”

They were at the street‐door now, and Ellice bade the girl good‐morning, saying they would come again on Monday.

“What a curious chance!” he went on. “It is the same girl we saw coming out of the synagogue last night. Did you notice?”

“Yes,” said Holcombe.

“You don’t seem very much interested, anyhow.”

“My dear fellow, I never could get up an ecstasy!”

“Still waters run deep, Holcombe. I suspect that is the case with you, you sly fellow.”

Monday came, and the two friends were again at No. 25. Rachel admitted them as before, and showed them into the old lace‐merchant’s den. He was alone, and looked very eager; but his wasted, wrinkled hands and dried‐up face spoke his miserly character, and froze the sympathy he so little cared to receive. He laid out his precious wares with trembling fingers, and it was curious to see these cobweb treasures drawn from common drawers and boxes, and heaped on a rickety deal table near the stove that was just lighted, because he was still so ill. Everything about the room looked cold and hungry; the floor was bare; the paint on the walls dirty and discolored; and an untidy assortment of tin pans and cheap crockery littered the neighborhood of the stove. The window looked into a back‐ yard, and what panes were not broken were obscured by dirt. In strange contrast to all this was a bouquet of fresh flowers on a chair.

While Ellice and the old man were bargaining, Holcombe fastened his eye on the flowers, conjecturing well whose present they were.

The old Jew asked enormous prices for his laces, and gave marvellous accounts of the difficulties he had sustained in procuring them as an excuse for his exorbitant demands. So the time seemed long to Henry, who knew little or nothing about such things, when suddenly Rachel appeared at the door with a basin of soup. “Fraulein Löwenberg sent you this,” she said to the old man, and then to the strangers: “You must excuse us; he is too weak to do without this at the accustomed time, and the fraulein is gone out.”

“Gone out!” querulously said the miser. “Gone out without coming to see me!”

“She knew you were engaged,” retorted Rachel. “You will see her again to‐ night.” She spoke as to a spoiled child.

“Well, well, business must be first, and she has business as well as I have.” And he went on with his flourishing declamations over his lovely laces.

Holcombe understood why she had omitted her morning’s visit to her old _protégé_, and, indeed, it would have been unlike his ideal of her had she acted otherwise.

“Have you nearly done, Ellice?” he said, coming up to the table.

“Yes; all right. See, I have chosen the nicest things I could find, as far as I know; but the fellow asks such confounded prices.”

“Well, you had only that to expect,” was the smiling answer, and then the young man turned to the lace‐merchant.

“Have you been ill long?”

“Only a month, and I should be dead if it were not for Maheleth. I cannot do without her.”

“But she is poor herself; she cannot bring you what you want, can she?”

“No, she cannot; she is poor, and her father is poor, and so am I. I sell nothing now; I have no customers.”

Holcombe smiled slightly, but he went on:

“Are you fond of flowers?”

“Yes, but I cannot afford them.”

“Then it would be cruel of me to ask a violet hearts‐ease of you; but, if you would give me that, I will send you more flowers, and bring you something you will like to‐morrow.”

“Yes, you may take one; but, if you want flowers, Maheleth can give you some; she has some growing in her room.”

“No, this one is enough. Good‐by, and I will try and see you again.”

As they left the house, Ellice said to his friend:

“Well, Holcombe, you _are_ green! You don’t mean to say you believe he is poor?”

“No, I don’t believe it; but he will be none the worse off for a few flowers and some good food, if he won’t get them for himself.”

“I suppose you remember that there is another invalid in the house, and the same person nurses both?”

“I know what you mean, Ellice, and I wish you wouldn’t joke; it is not fair.”

“Very well, old fellow; but, if you were anybody but yourself, I should say ‘take care.’ You always were the steadiest old chap going.”

A day or two afterwards, Holcombe was left alone again; he had sent things to Zimmermann as he had promised; but as yet he had not revisited the _Juden‐Strasse_. On Friday, there was a special service at the Catholic cathedral, at eight o’clock, and the young man, hardly knowing why, determined to go.

The church was only partially lighted, except the chancel, which was dazzling. The music was good, the congregation devout, and the German sermon as interesting as could be expected. The whole effect was very beautiful, and seemed to Henry a peace‐giving and heart‐soothing one. A rush of voices came breaking in upon his reverie at the _Tantum Ergo_, and the surging sound was like a mighty utterance of his own feelings. As the priest raised the Host, he bowed his head low, and prayed for peace and guidance; and when he lifted it again the first object his eye fixed on was a slight, dark‐robed figure, standing aside in the aisle, drooping her head against one of the columns. He knew the figure well; but, with a strange thrill, he asked himself why was she here? For the music? For the beauty of the sight? For love of a creed she was half ashamed to embrace? Or from the curiosity of a chance passer‐by?

He watched her as she moved behind the shadow of the pillar, and waited till she was enticed from her hiding‐place by the quick desertion of the once crowded church. Now the light from a lamp streamed down on her; the face was anxious and troubled, as if weary with thought.

“Friday, too!” he said to himself. “And she has come here on the very Sabbath. Perhaps she has been to her own service first. But what can it mean, if she only were what this would point to?”

To Be Continued.

Odd Stories. IV. The White Shah.

If thou wouldst hear a choice history of princes, go into the garden of the shah’s pleasure‐house, and hearken to what the humming‐birds tell thee in sleep. How else could thy servant have learned the memory of Shah Mizfiz, the forgotten? Was it not he who built the palace of a hundred towers in the valley of groves? Beautiful beyond compare was that valley’s lake which presented itself like a mirror before the pavilion of the shah; and magnificent as a house in the sky were the hundred delicate towers that rose one above the other, amid gardens and fountains, and half lost in groves of venerable height and shade. High hills whose sides were covered with woods and flowers, and watered with streams and fountains, shut out the valley from the world save where it was entered through a great gate crowned with towers; and a long colonnade of loftiest trees pranked with beds of tulips, hyacinths, and roses, and intertwined with flowering vines that here and there made curious arbors. From the windows, or from the balconies, or from the pavilions of his palace, the shah could see the lords and ladies who, dressed in gold‐broidered silks of all colors, shook their plumes as they rode up to his gate, or, listening to the song of minstrels, sailed upon the bosom of the lake.

Naught now could the shah do but dream. Surrounded by hills that fenced him from mankind, by waters that mirrored the skies or leaped into the sunlight, by flowers whose odors inspired the sense, by trees which everywhere made repose for him, and by towers, the intricacies and ingenuities of which rendered his palace ever new to him, he forgot all common things. The cares of state he left to his ministers at the gate of the valley; while in one or other of the innumerable courts of his palace, or among its unknown and invisible gardens, he retired from the intrusion of mortals. “I went to seek the rose‐king,” said or sang a poet of the court; “so I stripped a great rose of all its leaves, one by one, and in its heart of hearts I found the Shah Mizfiz.” Now, having captured the tenth of a number of white elephants, the like of which was never seen, except in the woods and by the lake of the imperial valley, where they roamed in romantic innocence and tameness, the Shah Mizfiz betook himself to his dreams as others do to their books.

At times, seated high on his favorite white elephant, the old shah rode in state through his grounds. Thence it came to pass that, seeing his beard like almond‐blossoms, and the milky color of his throne‐bearer, they who visited the gardens of the lake remembered him as the White Shah. Leaning on the cushions of his vine‐encircled pavilion, his silken beard and silvery locks floating in the breath of the zephyr, how often have the minstrels passed by beneath him over the mirror of the lake, singing under their gorgeous sails or to the time‐beat of their oars those songs which, with a tinkling and rippling melody, lingered in his ear. Less was it known how looked and fared the shah when he retired to the inmost bowers of the interior gardens of the hundred towers. But what wonder if in one of those fine day‐dreams so celebrated by the poet Bulghasel the flower‐ fairies themselves did him veritable honor, and, circling gardens of roses, tulips, and lilies, danced at his feet and round about him, an illusion of humor and beauty?

Ah! the deep‐eyed, far‐gazing White Shah! What dreams he dreamed of green ages in the youth of the world, of far‐off golden centuries to come, of ships navigating the air of sunset, of adventures in the stars, and of nights with the great moon‐shah! They were not to be told or counted; the number and wonder of them would have tasked a hundred scribes, and put as many dreamers to sleep. Howbeit, the shah’s visions persuaded him to become an oracle for all his empire. Statesmen consulted his dreams, and poets made themes of them, and doubtless the humane spirit of his visions found its way into the laws. Thanks to them, the people had abundant feast‐days, and, if a mine of precious stones were discovered, or the caravans were richer than usual, or the lords were moved to more than wonted bounty, or new fountains were built on the dry roads, or new temples set up here and there, the shah’s dreams were praised. When he had completed the thousandth of a line of dreams, the smallest of which would have made a paradise on earth again, he dreamed that his people were prosperous like none other under the sun; for his prime minister had artfully omitted to report that his eastern provinces were suffering the horrors of a famine, and those of the west were threatened by war. But on neither of these facts did the White Shah lay the blame for that final eclipse which ruined his dreams. In a fatal hour, having too long slept among the poppies, and drunk too much wine and coffee, he dreamt that the demon Sakreh had caught him up in a storm on the desert of Lop, out of which he let him drop into the Lake of Limbo, whence, fishing him up by the hair of his head, he banged him against the Caucasus and set him down to cool on the Himalaya, ere, taking him to the topmost height of the palace of the hundred towers, he allowed him to fall through the many‐ colored glasses of the dome of delights. His displeasure with the effects of this dream was heightened and consummated when the poet Bulghasel, in a moment of malediction, trod on his particular corn. From that moment, peace forsook the couch of the White Shah, and dreams of glory visited not his slumbers.

Henceforward what had been dreamland to the too happy shah became the saddest reality. In a white age he had lost his visions as old men lose their teeth. He wandered about the valley—no longer seated high on the pride of his white elephant, but crownless and on foot—murmuring from hour to hour: “I have lost my dream—I have lost my dream.” One day, leaving palace and throne, he passed out of his gate liked one crazed, to seek, as he said, his dream. Far away among the Parsees the poet Bulghasel found him after many pilgrimages: “And O my white‐haired sire,” cried the affectionate poet, “hast thou found the object of thy search?” “Yea, son,” rejoiced the White Shah, “I have found that which I never lost, but would that I had possessed; for then my dream was a fiction, and now truth is a sufficient dream for me. If the new shah would sleep well, let him have this dream.”

Signs Of The Times.

In Europe, of late, meetings have been the order of the day. There have been meetings of emperors and Internationalists; of “Old Catholics” and Catholics; of church congresses and congresses to disestablish the church; of “Home‐Rulers” and Dilkites. The voluntary expatriation of the Alsace‐ Lorraine population has followed close on the heels of the violent expulsion of the Jesuits, both influenced by the same motive power; trades‐unions have called together a society of German professors, who, by dint of powerful speeches of an explosive nature, succeeded finally in showing, in a very conclusive manner, that they knew little or nothing of what they were talking about. Gambetta has found his voice again; Russia has mildly but decidedly objected to its inflammable utterances, and in the midst of all the hubbub the eyes of the world have been attracted to the strange spectacle in these days of a nation, by a sudden and spontaneous movement, turning its steps to an humble shrine of the Blessed Virgin.

As for the meeting of the emperors, we were _not_ present at the council, and had no secret emissary concealed in the cup‐board. What was effected, or what was intended to be effected, is an utter mystery to us. We very much doubt if anything were effected at all; that is, anything real, lasting, and permanent. The composing elements were in themselves as incapable of mingling as oil and water. If people looked to permanent peace or peace for any length of time from it, we fear they will be sadly mistaken in view of what we have since seen. The effective forces of Austria are fixed at 800,000 men. The government, actuated doubtless by peaceful motives; finds it necessary to keep on hand a peace effective of 250,000; and, that this force may be in fighting order at any moment, the recruits must be kept for three years under colors. To supply this contingency, 30,000 more men are required, which draws a sum of $1,850,000 out of the national chest, a chest neither very deep nor very safe. The measure was objected to, whereupon Count Andrássy spurred them up by informing the astonished members that, notwithstanding the imperial exhibition of brotherly love at Berlin, the speeches, manœuvrings, fireworks, and the rest, he would not venture to answer for the continuance of peace even to the end of the present year. As an echo of the truth of this, Prussia has just given an order for 3,000,000 rifles of a new pattern, on the strength, doubtless, of the discharge of the French debt. Russia is increasing her already vast army steadily and surely, while France hopes by her new scheme of raising forces to show at the end of five years an active army of 715,000, and a territorial force of 720,000 men. So much for the effects of the imperial conference as regards peace.

The _Internationale_, true to the discordant elements of which it was composed, adjourned without effecting anything or coming to any conclusion. This was only to be expected; but we should not judge from this that it is dead, as has been too hastily done by many journals. Its life is disorder, and, if it can catch the trades‐unions, its influence would be paramount.

As for the meeting of the “Old Catholics”—we presume they call themselves “Old” Catholics as the Greeks called the furies _Eumenides_—it will soon have passed out of memory. We rejoice that it did occur, in order to show the “movement” in its true light. Luther himself had not half the chance which Döllinger and the rest enjoyed. The strongest of governments at their back, the whole anti‐Catholic world looking with eager eyes on this mountain in travail—_parturiet_; and not even the _ridiculus mus_ is born in recompense for all this labor, storm, fuss, and anxiety. We forget; there issued a long string of resolutions, which one or two newspapers published, the generality very sensibly finding them of too great length and of too little importance to burden their leaders with them. The whole affair was utterly ridiculous even to the _ménu_, which, as became a solid dinner, composed for the most part of German professors with a few Episcopal waifs and strays from England and America, was in Latin, and commenced thus:

Symposium. _Gustatio_: Pisciculi oleo perfusi et salmones fumo siccati ad cibi appetentiam excitandam. Mensa prima, etc.

And this is the way in which the “Old Catholics” meet to found or reform a church! The effect of it all is shown in the comments of the secular press. The cleverest journals in England and America, those who expected much from it, generally express themselves to the effect that, though far from saying that the meeting was without significance, it did not succeed in erecting a platform whereon a body could stand. The fact is this: We are far from denying to the majority of the men there assembled abundance of intellect and that sort of talent that can make a fine speech or perhaps compose a readable book, but the world, if it must be changed, wants something more solid than this.

Prince Bismarck’s measures are what Strafford would call “thorough”; and he is carrying out this “thorough” policy with far greater effect than the vacillating Stuart. The latter lost his head for too much heart; the German chancellor is not likely to imitate him in that. The Jesuits had small respite. We presume they are all out of Germany by this time. How much the country at large will gain in peace, solidity, and security by their expulsion it is impossible for us to say. Oddly enough, in Prince Bismarck’s stronghold, Prussia itself, we find that the new order is not destined to run quite smoothly. The diet is dissolved because the Upper House refused to pass the country reform bill in the face of the emperor and an official intimation from the minister of the interior that if the measure were defeated the government would dissolve the diet and convoke a new one. Whether the members of the Upper House will continue the fight, and come into direct collision with the power which they so helped to make supreme, we do not know yet, but we expect not.

Meanwhile, the Jesuits have not gone out of their fatherland alone. The sympathy of the whole Catholic world has gone out with them, and its expression is gaining volume daily. Addresses of condolence and protestations against the legal violence which expelled them are rising up day after day from the hearth‐stones of the land they have quitted, as well as from lands and multitudes to whom they as individuals are utterly unknown. Perhaps the most noticeable of the many which are continually appearing in their own land is that of the society of German Catholics recently assembled at Cologne, which passed a series of resolutions protesting strongly:

1. Against the assertion that the Catholic population is indifferent to the interests of fatherland, and hostile to the empire. 2. Against the laic laws which would control the affairs of the churches. 3. Against the state direction of the schools. 4. Against the expulsion of the Jesuits. 5. Against the encroachment of the state on the jurisdiction of the bishops. 6. Against the suppression of the temporal power of the Pope.

Such is the Catholic voice all the world over. If rulers can respect this voice, they will have no more faithful, earnest, or devoted children than the children of the Catholic Church. If they cannot respect it, they have only to expect an unfailing legal opposition until they are compelled to respect it, as Ireland, speaking in O’Connell, compelled England to do; as Germany, by lawful agitation and peaceful though unceasing and determined protest, will compel Prince Bismarck to do, until we see again restored to the country which they love and which loves them the sons who, by peaceful counsel and wise guidance, and religious instruction, will bring more glory, solid prosperity, enlightenment, and peace to the nation than a cycle of Bismarcks.

The Bishop of Ermeland still survives the terrible threats of the chancellor which have been gathering over his head in deepening thunder this long while for excommunicating heretic priests; the bolt has not yet fallen. Perhaps Jove finds himself a little puzzled how to fulminate it to a nicety. To show the justice of the Bismarck government, and how equally it deals with all classes, the Consistory of Magdeburg has quite recently decreed the excommunication of all Protestants who by mixed marriages shall educate their children as Catholics; the decree has been carried into execution at Lippspring; the case brought before the civil courts, and of course the pastor, one Schneider, who wrought the excommunication publicly and openly in the church, was supported by the just weight of the law. Now, excommunication is excommunication whether you call it Catholic or Protestant. Why, then, threaten with impeachment? Why stop the salary which the government for the country bestows in the one case, and let the other go entirely free? And yet this is all according to law!

Another anomaly according to law is displayed in the seizing of the schools by the government. We have not space here to go into the whole question, instructive though it would be, as showing the determination of this government to uproot the Catholic faith by every means in its power. But we will mention one instance. A ministerial circular accompanied the notice of the new arrangements, informing the teachers that it was desirable that their scholars should belong to no religious confraternities—of the Rosary, Blessed Virgin, and such like—and that if they persisted in belonging to them they should be dismissed. We find it necessary to endorse this statement by informing our readers that it is plain, unvarnished fact. Civil marriage is now in full sway; that is to say, it is no longer a sacrament according to law. What wonder that the German bishops assembled at Fulda gave utterance to their solemn protest, an extract of which we cull? It reads as though it had been penned in the days of Diocletian, or Julian the Apostate, or Henry VIII. But in these days, when mere human society has come to know its power, and dream that it possesses freedom, the protest jars on our ears as something out of tune, out of time, out of date altogether:

“We demand, as a right which no one can dispute to us, that the bishops, the parish priests of the cathedral churches, and the directors of souls, be only appointed in accordance with the laws of the church and the agreement existing between the church and state.

“In accordance with these laws and agreements, the Catholic people and ourselves cannot consider as legal a director of souls or a teacher of religion one who has not been so named by his bishop; and we, the Catholic people and ourselves, cannot consider as legally recognized a bishop who has not been named by the Pope.

“We claim equally for ourselves and for all Catholics the right of professing throughout Germany our holy Catholic faith in all its integrity, at all times and in all freedom, and to rest upon the principle that we are in no wise constrained to suffer within the bosom of our religious community those who do not profess the Catholic faith, and who do not submit entirely to the authority of the church.

“We consider as a violation of our church and of the rights which are guaranteed to it every attack made against the liberty of religious orders. We regard and vindicate, also, as an essential and inalienable right of the Catholic Church, the full and entire liberty which it possesses of elevating its servants in accordance with ecclesiastical laws, and we demand not only that the church exercise over the Catholic schools (primary, secondary, and higher) the influence which alone can guarantee to the Catholic people that its children shall receive in the schools a Catholic education and instruction, but we claim also for the church the freedom to found and direct in an independent manner, certain private establishments ordained for the teaching of the sciences in accordance with Catholic principles. In fine, we maintain and defend the sacred character of Christian marriage as that of a sacrament of the Catholic Church, as well as the right which the divine will has given to the church in connection with this sacrament.”

The signatures of the bishops are affixed to this document, which is addressed to all the German governments, and produced a commotion and irritation among all the national liberal journals which were unexampled. We have given this extract here in order to bring home to the minds of our readers how hard the church is driven in Germany. When the bishops and the laity combined feel themselves called upon to protest in this style, the government which for no reason whatever can give rise to such a protest—signed by the saintly chiefs of a body of 14,000,000, and endorsed in meeting after meeting by those 14,000,000 and the countless numbers of their co‐religionists outside of Germany scattered through the broad world—must be one which does not govern, but tyrannizes.

The same “thorough” policy prevailed in Alsace and Lorraine. On the very day, October 1, when the option of declaring for France or Germany arrived, all the men who remained in the countries named were enrolled in the Prussian service from that date. This, beyond what Mr. Disraeli would call a “sentimental grievance,” drove them from the country, as it must have been intended to do. Service under the power that annexed them, which they but yesterday fought against, and a service the most rigorous and exacting that exists, as it must be in order to retain its supremacy, was something that seems to have been ingeniously invented in order to drive the people out. The provinces are more than decimated; the Prussian army, if increased at all, is increased in the event of a renewed war by untrustworthy men, and a new drop of gall is thrown into the already overbitter cup which France is compelled to swallow. And yet the _Provinzial Correspondenz_ (official) of Berlin, in view of October 1, said: “The government has not hesitated an instant in calling without delay on the inhabitants of Alsace and Lorraine to serve in the German army, as the best and surest means to evoke and develop speedily among the population newly reunited to Germany the sentiment of an intimate community with the German people.”