Chapter VIII: Faith And Science Of Progress (6)

“Except at the Reformation, when the great overflow of spiritual
rebellion was favored by such a combination of circumstances as
has never occurred since, no man or group of men have succeeded in
rebelling against Rome, and yet continued to keep up a religious
character and influence. No man has been able to do it, whatever
the excellence of his beginning might be, or the purity of the
motives with which he started. Even in the Church of England the
career of a man who separates himself from her communion is
generally a painful one. He makes a commotion and excitement in
the world for a time before he has fully made up his mind; and at
the moment of his withdrawal he is sure of remark and notice, at
all events, from certain classes. But after that brief moment he
sinks flat as the spirits do in the _Inferno_, and the dark wave
pours over him, and he is heard of no more. All that sustained and
strengthened and gave him a fictitious importance as the member of
a great corporation has fallen away from him. He has dropped like
a stone into the water—like a foundered ship into the sea. In
England, however, after all has been done, there is a sea of
dissent to drop into, and though his new surroundings may please
him little, yet he will come out of the giddiness of his downfall
to take some comfort in them—will accustom himself by degrees to
the lower social level, the different spiritual atmosphere. But he
who dissents from the Church of Rome has no such refuge. The
moment he steps outside her fold he finds himself in outer
darkness, through which awful salutations are shrieked to him by
the enemies of religion, by those whom he has avoided and
condemned all his life, and with whom he can agree only on the one
sole article of rebellion. If he ventures to hold up his head at
all after what all his friends will call his apostasy, the best
that he can hope for is to be courted by heretics, professed
enemies of the church which he has been born in, and which
probably he loves most dearly still, notwithstanding his
disobedience. To quarrel with your home is one thing—to find its
domestic laws hard, and its prejudices insupportable; but to
plunge into the midst of the enemies of that home, and to hear it
assailed with the virulence of ignorance—to join in gibes against
your mother, and mockery of her life and motives—is a totally
different matter. Yet this is almost all that a contumacious
priest has to look forward to. A recent and striking example, to
which we need not refer more plainly, will occur to every one who
has watched the contemporary history of the Roman Catholic Church.
In this case a brilliant and remarkable preacher—a man supposed
the other day to be one of the most eminent and promising sons of
Rome—after wavering and falling away in some points from
ecclesiastical obedience, suddenly appeared in an admiring circle
of gentle Anglicanism, surrounded by a fair crowd of worshipping
Protestants, ready to extend to him all that broad and universal
sympathy which he had no doubt been trained to regard as vilest
latitudinarianism, or the readiness of Pilate to make friends with
Herod. This prospect must chill the very soul of a man who has
received the true priestly training, and who has been educated in
that love of his church which is of itself a noble and generous
sentiment. The best thing that can happen to him is to fall among
heretics; the other alternative, and the only one, so far as
events have yet made it apparent, to fall among infidels: and as
his education has taught him to make but small distinction between
them, and the infidels are nearer at hand, and his own countrymen,
what wonder if it is into their hands that the miserable man, torn
from all his ancient foundations, ejected from his natural place,
heart‐weary with the madness which is wrought by anger against
those we love, should fall—what wonder if he should rush to the
furthest extremity, hiding what he feels to be his shame, and
endeavoring to take some dismal comfort in utter negation of that
past from which he has been torn! Whether there are new
developments in the future for the new Protesters whom a recent
decision has raised up, we cannot tell. But such has been the case
in the past. Life is over for the rebellious priest who breaks
with his church; his possibility of service in his vocation has
come to an end; even the most careless peasant in his parish will
turn from him. He is a deserter from his regiment in the face of
the enemy, false to his colors, a man no longer of any human use.”

It was during Montalembert’s sojourn in Italy, on his remarkable _Avenir_ pilgrimage, that he became the intimate friend of Albert de la Ferronays, the hero of Mrs. Craven’s beautiful _Récit d’une Sœur_. He appears in the book designated under the name of Montal. From the same period, also, dates his intimacy with Rio, the future historian of Christian art. The young peer’s taste for art, always strong, and his enthusiastic admiration of the glorious remains of mediæval architecture, were both developed and strengthened under the teaching and influence of Rio. In March, 1833, he published an article in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, in which he energetically denounced the desecration and ruin of the grand old architectural monuments of France. It was addressed in the form of a letter to Victor Hugo, then leader of the Romantic school, who strongly sympathized with him on this subject, and whose _Notre Dame de Paris_ had been reviewed in the _Avenir_ by Montalembert with enthusiastic praise for the grand historical framework of the story. During the autumn of that year, Montalembert went to Germany, and, as we have seen, accidentally stopped at Marburg. Travel, research, and the collection of materials for the life of Elizabeth now engrossed all his time, until, attaining the legal age, twenty‐five, he took his seat in the Chamber of Peers. His first appearance at the bar of this chamber had been in defence of the liberty of teaching, and his first speech was in defence of the liberty of the press. These two discourses prefigured his parliamentary career. He was always the ardent advocate of liberty; rarely heard on the side of the government; and generally the leader of a conscientious and loyal opposition: which, well considered, would have been found the most prudent adviser of the administration in power.

Strongly imbued with English ideas, he fully appreciated the conservative power of an energetic opposition, ever ready to criticise, to question, to challenge, or to expose whatever might seem arbitrary or unconstitutional in the acts of the government. But this idea of an opposition at once loyal and law‐loving, was unfamiliar to his countrymen. To them, as a general thing, opposition meant revolution, and to many the spectacle of a peer of France, a Catholic, and a _proprietaire_, who was at once the friend of the proletaire, the dissenter, the oppressor, and the slave, was a paradox. And yet paradox there was none, for his declaration of principles was always clear and bold. Thus, in striving to cull from the Chamber of Peers a public expression of sympathy for the Poles, he insisted that it was their right and their duty to make an avowal of national sentiments, an expression of national opinion, that it was an obligation imposed by humanity and required by wise policy. “What is it,” he asked, “that has raised the British parliament to so high a degree of popularity and moral influence in Europe? Is it not because for more than a century no grave event has happened in any country without finding an echo there? Is it not because no right has been oppressed, no treaty broken anywhere, without a discussion on both sides of the question before the peers and commons of England, whose assemblies have thus become, in the silence of the world, a sort of tribunal where all the great causes of humanity are pleaded, and where opinion pronounces those formidable judgments which, sooner or later, are always executed?”

And his independence was that of the man as well as of the orator. He was committed to no policy, sought no party ends, but always, and at all cost, maintained the good, the just, the honorable. A lost or desperate cause, if equitable, was always sure of his support. The three oppressed nations of the earth, Poland under Russia, Ireland under England, and Greece under Turkey, were his most cherished clients. The weaker side ever strongly attracted him. “Penetrated by the conviction that just causes are everlasting,” says M. Cochin, “and that every protest against injustice ends by moving heaven and convincing men, he sought out, so to speak, every oppressed cause when at its last breath, to take its burden upon himself, and to become its champion. There is a suffering race, a race lost in distant isles, the race of black slaves, which has been oppressed for centuries. He took its cause in hand, and from the year 1837 labored for its emancipation. There are in all manufacturing places a crowd of hollow‐cheeked children, with pale faces and worn eyes, and the sight of them made a profound impression upon him; he took their cause also in hand. If you run over the mere index of his speeches, you will find all generous efforts contained in it.”

The year 1836 brought two notable events in the life of Montalembert—the publication of his first work, his _Life of S. Elizabeth_, and his marriage to a daughter of the noble house of de Merode in Belgium. Meantime, he continued his attacks on vandalism in art and his parliamentary labors, and was mainly instrumental in the creation of the committee of historical art and the commission on historical monuments, from both of which he was excluded under the Empire, which no more sympathized with his pure conceptions of Christian art than it did with his conception of Christian morals.

Rio has recorded the result of the impression made by Montalembert upon the English poet Rogers, which admirably illustrates the fact that Montalembert’s religion was not a sort of moral “Sunday suit” to be put off and on as occasion might require, and at the same time reveals to us the old poet in an entirely new aspect. The Montalemberts had spent the evening with Rogers, “and after their departure,” Rio relates, “when I found myself alone with Rogers, the expression of his countenance, which up to that moment had been smiling and animated, changed so suddenly that I feared I had offended him by some word of doubtful meaning which I might not altogether have understood. He paced about the room without saying anything, and I did not know whether I might venture to break this incomprehensible silence. At last he broke it himself, and said to me that, if he had the power of putting himself in the place of another, he would choose that of Montalembert, not on account of his youth and his beautiful wife, but because he possessed that immovable and cloudless faith that seemed to himself the most enviable of all gifts.”

Mr. Neale advised Montalembert that he had been elected an honorary member of the Cambridge Camden Society. On receipt of the news of this “unsolicited and unmerited honor,” Montalembert replied in a letter protesting against the usurpation of the title “Catholic” by the Camden Society. Here are some of its trenchant passages:

“The attempt to steal away from us, and appropriate to the use of
a fraction of the Church of England, the glorious title of
Catholic, is proved to be an usurpation by every monument of the
past and present, by the coronation oath of your sovereigns, by
all the laws that have _established_ your church. The name itself
is spurned with indignation by the greater half at least of those
who belong to the Church of England, just as the Church of England
itself is rejected with scorn and detestation by the greater half
of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom. The judgment of the
whole indifferent world, the common sense of humanity, agrees with
the judgment of the Church of Rome, and with the sense of her 150
millions of children, to dispossess you of this name. The Church
of England, who has denied her mother, is rightly without a
sister. She has chosen to break the bonds of unity and obedience.
Let her therefore stand alone before the judgment‐seat of God and
man. Even the debased Russian Church—that church where lay‐
despotism has closed the church’s mouth and turned her into a
slave—disdains to recognize the Anglicans as Catholics. Even the
Eastern heretics, although so sweetly courted by Puseyite
missionaries, sneer at this new and fictitious Catholicism. That
the so‐called Anglo‐Catholics, whose very name betrays their
usurpation and their contradiction, whose doctrinal articles,
whose liturgy, whose whole history, are such as to disconnect them
from all mankind except those who are born English and speak
English—that they should pretend on the strength of their private
judgment alone to be what the rest of mankind deny them to be,
will assuredly be ranked among the first follies of the XIXth
century.... You may turn aside for three hundred years to come, as
you have done for three hundred years past, from the fountain of
living waters; but to dig out a small channel of your own, for
your own private insular use, wherein the living truth will run
apart from its own docile and ever obedient children—_that_ will
no more be granted to you than it has been to the Arians, the
Nestorians, the Donatists, or any other triumphant heresy. I
protest, therefore, against the usurpation of a sacred name by the
Camden Society as iniquitous; and I next protest against the
object of this society, and all such efforts in the Anglican
Church, as absurd.”

We now have before us a period of seven years in the life of Montalembert, the record of which may be said to be the history of the great public questions which then agitated France; so intimately was his entire parliamentary career bound up with their development. The first and most important of these questions was that of education. Then, as now, the examination for the degree of A.B. (_baccalaureat_) was the key to all public occupations.

But at that time, from 1830 to 1848, no one had a right to present himself for this examination unless he had been educated in one of the public _lycées_, or some school licensed by the university, into whose hands the government had placed the monopoly of education. A wealthy parent might educate a boy under his own supervision in the best universities of England or Germany, or by private tutors, yet the youth would not be permitted to present himself for examination, although able to pass it with ease. And the degree resulting from this examination was the essential condition upon which the possibility of a public career was opened to every young Frenchman. Without it he could by no possibility be admitted to any public employment, the bench or the bar. Ability, accomplishments, acquirements, had nothing to do with the question. The young man must pass through a state school, or he was for ever debarred from a public career in his own country. But to pass through a state school, as all Christian parents, both Catholic and Protestant, then well knew in France, was to leave it with the loss of his religious principles. The biographer may well find it “equally incredible that such restrictions should have been borne by any people, and that a government founded upon liberal principles and erected by revolution should have dared to maintain them; but so it was.”

The parliamentary campaign on the educational question opened in 1844. Discussion soon reached a point of warmth. “There is one result given under the auspices of the university,” said Montalembert, “which governs every other, and which is as clear as daylight. It is that children who leave their family with the seed of faith in them, to enter the university, come out of it infidels.” The contradictions and _mouvement_ incited by this statement pushed the orator to more emphatic statement. “I appeal,” he said, “to the testimony of all fathers and mothers. Let us take any ten children out of the schools regulated by the university, at the end of their studies, and find one Christian among them if you can. One in ten! and that would be a prodigy. I address myself not to such or such a religious belief, but to all. Catholics, Protestants, Jews, all who believe humbly and sincerely in the religion which they possess, it is to them I appeal, whom I recognize as my brethren. And all those who have a sincere belief, and practise it, will confirm what I have said of the religious results of the education of the university. Let us hear the testimony of the young and eloquent defender of French Protestantism, the son of our colleague M. Agenor de Gasparin.... ‘Religious education,’ he says, ‘has no existence in the colleges.... I bethink myself with terror what I was when I issued forth from this national education. I recollect what all my companions were. Were we very good citizens? I know not, but certainly we were not Christians; we did not possess even the weakest beginnings of evangelical faith.’ ”

The results of the French compulsory anti‐Christian education may be read in current history. “The men it has brought up are the men who allowed France to be bound for eighteen years in the humiliating bondage of the Second Empire; who have furnished excuses to all the world for calling her the most socially depraved of nations; who have filled her light literature with abominations, and her graver works with blasphemy; and who have finally procured for her national downfall and humiliation.”

Montalembert planted his little band in battle array against the compact and overwhelming forces of the government, under the inspiration and trumpet‐tongued tones of his admirable _fils des croisés_ speech in the Chamber of Peers. Here, with its memorable termination, are a few passages from it. We regret we cannot give it entire. “Allow me to tell you, gentlemen, a generation has arisen among you of men whom you know not. Let them call us Neo‐Catholics, sacristans, ultramontanes, as you will; the name is nothing; the thing exists. We take for our motto that with which the generous Poles in the last century headed their manifesto of resistance to the Empress Catherine: ‘We, who love freedom more than all the world, and the Catholic religion more than freedom,’ ... are we to acknowledge ourselves so degenerated from the condition of our fathers, that we must give up our reason to rationalism, deliver our conscience to the university, our dignity and our freedom into the hands of law‐makers whose hatred for the freedom of the church is equalled only by their profound ignorance of her rights and her doctrines?... You are told to be _implacable_. Be so; do all that you will and can against us. The church will answer you by the mouth of Tertullian and the gentle Fénelon. ‘You have nothing to fear from us; but we do not fear you.’ And I add in the name of Catholic laymen like myself, Catholics of the XIXth century: We will not be helots in the midst of a free people. WE ARE THE SUCCESSORS OF THE MARTYRS, AND WE DO NOT TREMBLE BEFORE THE SUCCESSORS OF JULIAN THE APOSTATE. WE ARE THE SONS OF THE CRUSADERS, AND WE WILL NEVER YIELD TO THE PROGENY OF VOLTAIRE!”

“_Mouvements divers_” might well—according to the reported proceedings of the day—follow this burst of indignant eloquence. The words made the very air of France tingle; they defined at once the two sides with one of those happy strokes which make the fortune of a party, and which are doubly dear to all who speak the language of epigram—the most brilliantly clear, incisive, and distinct of tongues. Henceforward the _fils des croisés_ were a recognized power, but they were only known and heard by and through Montalembert, and, so far as the public struggle was concerned, might be said to exist in him alone. Montalembert fought almost single‐handed. “The attitude of this one man between that phalanx of resolute opponents and the shifty mass of irresolute followers, is as curious and interesting as any political position ever was. He stands before us turning from one to the other, never wearied, never flagging, maintaining an endless brilliant debate, now with one set of objectors, now with another, prompt with his answers to every man’s argument, rapid as lightning in his sweep upon every man’s fallacy: now proclaiming himself the representative of the Catholics in France, and pouring forth his claim for them as warm, as urgent, as vehement as though a million of men were at his back: and now turning upon these very Catholics with keen reproaches, with fiery ridicule, with stinging darts of contempt for their weakness. Thus he fought single‐handed, confronting the entire world. Nothing daunted him, neither failure nor abuse, neither the resentment of his enemies, nor the languor of his friends, ... not always parliamentary in his language, bold enough to say everything, as his adversaries reproached him, yet never making a false accusation or imputing a mean motive. No one hotter in assault, none more tremendous in the onslaught; but he did not know what it was to strike a stealthy or back‐handed blow.”

Time has strange revenges. In April, 1849, came up the important question of the _inamovibilité de la magistrature_—the appointment for life of magistrates. His old enemies were delighted to find that Montalembert declared himself unreservedly in the affirmative, and none more than M. Dupin, the very man who uttered the memorable “_Soyez implacables_.” Again he had the government to contend with, for under the law magistrates were no longer irremovable. Montalembert proposed, as an amendment, that all magistrates in office should be reappointed, and that all new appointments should be made for life. He pointed out the evils of a system which made judgeships tenable only from one revolution to another, and made a noble office the object of a “hunt” for promotion dishonoring to all parties. He spoke of the magistracy as the priesthood (_sacerdoce_) of justice, and added: “Allow me to pause a moment upon the word priesthood, which I have just employed. Of all the weaknesses and follies of the times in which we live, there is none more hateful to me than the conjunction of expressions and images borrowed from religion with the most profane facts and ideas. But I acknowledge that our old and beautiful French language, the immortal and intelligent interpreter of the national good sense, has, by a marvellous instinct, assimilated religion and justice. It has always said: _The temples of the law, the sanctuary of justice, the priesthood of the magistracy_.” The cause was won by his eloquence, and thus the first political success he ever gained was not for himself or his friends, but for his enemies. Truly a fitting triumph for a son of the crusaders.

The peerage now being abolished, Montalembert was returned as deputy to the National Assembly by the Department of Doubs. Here his career was, if possible, yet more brilliant than in the Chamber of Peers. It would require a volume fitly to record them. Soon came the presidency of Louis Bonaparte. Himself the soul of honor, with an eye single to the welfare of France, deceived by solemn assurances which he unfortunately credited, unsuspicious of a depth of treachery which he could not conceive, and alarmed by the horrible spectre of socialism, just arising from its native blood and mire, Montalembert became the dupe and the victim of Louis Napoleon. When power had been fully secured, the new president offered him the position of senator, along with the _dotation_ of 30,000 francs, which was refused without hesitation. A second and a third time the offer was renewed, the last offer being urged by De Morny in person. The only position he held under the government of Louis Napoleon was the nominal one of a member of the Consultative Commission, which he resigned on the publication of the decree for the confiscation of the property of the House of Orleans. He had already begun to suffer from the attacks of the disease to which he finally succumbed; and it was from his sick‐bed that he went to receive at the hands of the French Academy the highest and most dearly prized reward of French talent and genius. Montalembert was elected to the seat in the Academy vacated by the death of M. Droz, and his reception was an event. Being now freed from the absorbing engagements of life, he made several journeys to England, and travelled into Hungary, Poland, and Spain. His work entitled _L’Avenir Politique de l’Angleterre_ was the fruit of his English visits; and was well received both in France and England. In October, 1858, the Paris _Correspondant_ published a remarkable letter from Montalembert, describing a debate in the English Parliament. Its every paragraph was so full of a subtle and powerful contrast between political liberty in England and the absence of it in France that the Imperial government and its adherents were stung to the quick. He speaks of leaving “an atmosphere foul with servile and corrupting miasma (_chargée de miasmes serviles et corrupteurs_) to breathe a purer air and to take a bath of free life in England.” Referring to a former French colony, he says: “In Canada, a noble race of Frenchmen and Catholics, unhappily torn from our country, but remaining French in heart and habits, owes to England the privilege of having retained or acquired, along with perfect religious freedom, all the political and municipal liberties which France herself has repudiated.” A criminal prosecution was immediately begun against the count for this letter. Four separate accusations were brought. Among them were “exciting the people to hate and despise the government of the emperor, and of attempting to disturb the public peace.” The legal penalties were imprisonment from three months to five years, fine from 500 to 6,000 francs, and expulsion from France. According to French custom, the prisoner on trial was interrogated concerning the obnoxious passages, and, when Montalembert answered, it was discovered that the emperor and his government, not the prisoner at the bar, was on trial. With calm gravity he acknowledged each damning implication as an historical fact not to be denied, “enjoying, there can be no doubt,” says his biographer, “to the bottom of his heart, this unlooked‐for chance of adding a double point to every arrow he had launched, and planting his darts deliberately and effectually in the joints of his adversaries’ armor.”

The foundation of Montalembert’s great work, _The Monks of the West_, was laid in his studies for the life of S. Elizabeth, and the remainder of his active life was now devoted to its completion. It is sufficient to refer to it. We need not dwell upon this greatest production of his literary genius. Besides this, two other remarkable productions came from his pen toward the close of his career. These were the long and eloquent addresses, _L’Eglise libre dans l’Etat libre_, delivered before the Congress of Malines, and his _Victoire du Nord aux Etats‐Unis_, which, says his biographer, “is little else than a hymn of triumph in honor of that success which to him was a pure success of right over wrong, of freedom over slavery.”

It is well known that Montalembert was one of those who opposed the proclamation of the dogma of infallibility. On this point, his biographer gives us this interesting information.

One of his visitors said to him, while lying on what proved to be his death‐bed: “If the Infallibility is proclaimed, what will you do?” “I will struggle against it as long as I can,” he said; but when the question was repeated, the sufferer raised himself quickly, with something of his old animation, and turned to his questioner. “What should I do?” he said. “We are always told that the pope is a father. _Eh bien!_—there are many fathers who demand our adherence to things very far from our inclination, and contrary to our ideas. In such a case, the son struggles while he can; he tries hard to persuade his father; discusses and talks the matter over with him; but when all is done, when he sees no possibility of succeeding, but receives a distinct refusal, he submits. I shall do the same.”

“You will submit so far as form goes,” said the visitor. “You will submit externally. But how will you reconcile that submission with your ideas and convictions?”

Still more distinctly and clearly he replied: “I will make no attempt to reconcile them. I will submit my will, as has to be done in respect to all the other questions of faith. I am not a theologian; it is not my part to decide on such matters. And God does not ask me to understand. He asks me to submit my will and intelligence, and I will do so.” “After having made this solemn though abrupt confession of faith,” says the witness whom we have quoted, “he added, with a smile, ‘It is simple enough; there is nothing extraordinary in it.’ ”

The last years of the life of this distinguished man were one long protracted agony of physical suffering. The symptoms of disease that first manifested themselves in 1852 had gone on increasing in severity until in 1869, more than a year before his death, he speaks of himself as _vivens sepulcrum_. “I am fully warranted in saying that the death of M. de Montalembert was part of his glory,” writes M. Cochin, in describing his constancy and resignation. He died on the 13th of March, 1870.

At The Shrine.

I.

The sunset’s dying radiance falls
On chancel‐gloom and sculptured shrine,
A splendor wraps the pictured walls,
Where painted saints in glory shine!
And blent with sweet‐tongued vesper‐bells,
Through echoing aisles and arches dim
The organ’s solemn music swells,
The sweetly chanted evening hymn.

II.

Low at Our Lady’s spotless feet
A white‐robed woman kneels in prayer:
The _Deus Meus_ murmurs sweet,
While _Glorias_ throb on perfumed air;
Before the circling altar‐rail
She breathes her _Aves_ soft and low—
The golden hair beneath her veil
Wreathed like a glory on her brow.

III.

The sunset’s purple splendors fade,
The dark’ning shades of twilight fall,
The moonbeam’s silver touch is laid
On sculptur’d saint and pictur’d wall;
And while the weeping watcher kneels,
And silence weaves her magic spells,
The gray dawn thro’ the oriel steals,
And morning wakes the matin‐bells.

ADVENT, 1872.

A Christmas Recognition.

We were old‐fashioned people at Aldred, and Christmas was our special holiday. The house was always filled with guests, not such as many of our grander neighbors asked to their houses, but such as cared for good old‐ fashioned cheer and antiquated habits. Not all were relations, for we never asked relations merely on account of their kinship, according to the regulation mixing of a conventional Christmas party, but among our own people were many whose presence at our Christmas gatherings was as certain as the recurrence of the festival itself. Among them was a great‐aunt, a soft, mild old lady, always dressed in widow’s weeds, but with a face as fresh as a girl’s, and hair white as the snowy cap she wore to conceal it. She had not come alone, for her adopted son was with her, the promised husband of her only child, dead years ago. He had left his own home and people, like Ruth, for the lonely, childless woman whom he was to have called mother, and remained her inseparable companion through her beautiful and resigned old age. There were, besides these, a young girl whose aspect was peculiar and attractive, and whose manner had in its mixture of modesty and self‐reliance a piquancy that added to the fascination of her person. She had come with a distant cousin of hers, a widow of a different type from our dear old relative, and whose object in chaperoning Miss Houghton must have been mixed. She was small, blonde, coquettish, and thirty‐two, though no one would have taken her for more than twenty‐five. She looked soft, pliable, irresolute, and tender, and men often found in her a repose which was a soothing contrast to her cousin’s energetic, peculiar, somewhat eccentric ways; only it was the repose yielded by a downy cushion, and people wearied of it after a while. The secret of the apparent partnership between these two opposite natures was perhaps this: the widow had a rich jointure, and was an excellent _parti_, while her cousin was portionless. Miss Houghton was thus doubly a foil to Mrs. Burtleigh.

I shall not speak of the other guests in detail, with the exception of one whom it would be impossible to overlook. He was a man nearer forty than thirty‐five, good‐humored and careless to all appearance, a hard worker in the battle of life, a cosmopolitan philosopher, and one of those handy, useful men who can sew on a button, cook an omelet, and kiss a bride as easily and unconcernedly as they gallop across country or horsewhip a villain. He had been in Mexico, surveying and engineering for an English railroad company, and he had spent some years in the East as the land‐ agent of a progress‐loving pacha. Europe he knew as well as we knew Aldred, while the year he had been absent from us had been filled by new and stirring experiences in Upper Egypt. But I forget; we have yet to speak of many little details of Christmas‐tide which preceded the gathering in of the whole party.

The kitchen department was, of course, conspicuous on this occasion. This included the village poor, who were regularly assembled every day for soup until Christmas eve, when each household received a joint of beef and a fine plum‐pudding. Some of us went round the village in a sleigh, and distributed tea and sugar as supplementary items. It was a traditional Yule‐tide, for the snow lay soft, even, and thick over the roads, as it but seldom does in England; then, the school was visited and solidly provisioned, the children were invited to a monster tea with accompaniment of a magic‐lantern show, after which the prizes were to be distributed, as well as warm clothing for the winter season. Nothing was said of the Christmas‐tree, as that was kept as a surprise.

The decoration of house and chapel was a wonderful and prolonged business, and afforded great amusement. Holly grew in profusion at Aldred, and a cart‐load of the bright‐berried evergreen was brought to the house the day preceding Christmas eve. The people we have made acquaintance with were already with us, and vigorously helped us on with the preparations. Such fun as there was when Miss Houghton insisted upon crowning the marble bust of the Indian grandee, Rammohun Roy, with a holly wreath, and when Mrs. Burtleigh gave a pretty, ladylike little cry as she pricked her fingers with the glossy leaves! The children of the house and those of another house in the neighborhood (orphan children whose gloomy home made them a perpetual source of pity to us) were helping as unhelpfully as ever, but what of that? It was a joyous, animated scene, and, still more, a romantic one; for the traveller, who had claimed a former acquaintance with Miss Houghton, now seemed to become her very shadow—or knight, let us say; it is more appropriate to the spirit of a festival so highly honored in mediæval times. The chapel, a beautiful Gothic building, small but perfect, was decorated with mottoes wrought in leaves, such as “Unto us a Son is born, unto us a Child is given,” and _Gloria in excelsis Deo_, etc., while festoons of evergreens hung from pillar to pillar, and draped the stone‐carved tribune at the western end with a living tapestry. Round the altar were heaped in rows, placed one higher than another, evergreens of every size and kind, mingled with islands of bright camellias, the pride of the renowned hothouses of Aldred. White, red, and streaked, the flowers seemed like stars among dark masses of clouds; and, when we lit a few of the tall candles to see the effect, it was so solemn that we longed for the time to pass quickly, till the midnight Mass should call forth all the beauty of which we had seen but a part.

These decorations had been mainly the work of the traveller (whom, in our traditional familiarity, we called “Cousin Jim”) and of our other friend, the adopted son of our old aunt; but, though their brains had conceived, it was Miss Houghton’s deft fingers that executed the work best. The last touch had just been put to an immense cross of holly which was to be swung from the ceiling, to supply the place of the rood that in old times guarded the choir‐screen. A star of snow‐white camellias was to be poised just above it, and a tall ladder had been put in readiness to facilitate the delicate task. Miss Houghton stood at the foot, one arm leaning on the ladder, the other holding aloft the white star. Her friend was halfway up, bearing the great cross, when he suddenly heard a low voice, swelling gradually, intoning the words of the Christmas hymn:

Adeste fideles,
Læti triumphantes;
Venite, venite in Bethlehem:
Natum videte
Regem angelorum:
Venite adoremus,
Venite adoremus,
Venite adoremus Dominum.

Startled and touched, he began the repeating words of the chorus, pausing with his green cross held high in his arms. The others who, scattered about the chapel, heard his deep tones, answering, took up the chorus, and chanted it slowly to the end, Miss Houghton looking round with tears in her eyes, at this unexpected response to the suppressed and undefinable feelings of her heart. It was an impressive scene, the guests, servants, gardeners, and a few of the choir‐boys, all mingling in the impromptu worship so well befitting the beautiful work they had in hand. At the end of the verse, the traveller hastily gained the top of the ladder, and, having fastened the holly cross in its place, intoned a second verse, in which Miss Houghton immediately joined, and the harmonious blending of their voices had, if possible, a still more beautiful effect than the unaccompanied chant of the first verse. Again the chorus chimed in,

Venite adoremus,
Venite adoremus,
Venite adoremus Dominum.

in full, solemn tones, and all sang from their places, their festoons in their hands, so that at the end of the hymn the traveller said thoughtfully to his companion: “_Laborare est orare_ should be our motto henceforth. I wish all our work were as holy as this.”

“And why not?” she answered quickly; “only _will_ it so, and so it shall be. We are our own creators.”

“What a rash saying!” he exclaimed, with a smile; “but I know what you mean. God gives us the tools and the marble; it is ours to carve it _into_ an angel or a fiend.”

At last the chapel decoration was over, and a few of the more venturesome among us went out in the snow for a walk.

Meanwhile, in the corridor (so we called our favorite sitting‐room), the Yule‐logs were crackling cheerfully on the wide hearth, and the fitful tongues of flame shot a red glimmer over the old‐fashioned furniture. One of the chairs was said to have belonged to Cardinal Wolsey, and there was another, a circular arm‐chair, that looked as if it also should have had a history connected with the great and learned. Full‐length portraits of the old possessors of Aldred covered the walls, and on the stained‐glass upper compartments of the deep bay‐window at one end were depicted the arms and quarterings of the family. The Yule‐logs were oak, cut from our own trees, and perforated all over with large holes through which the flames shot up like fire‐sprites.

The Christmas‐tree and magic‐lantern also had to be put in order to save time and trouble, and a stage for tableaux occupied the rapt attention of the amateur mechanician (our great‐aunt’s son) and of “Jim,” the traveller and practised factotum. Miss Houghton was never very far from the scene of these proceedings, and, when she was not quite so near, “Cousin Jim” was not quite so eager. Almost all our guests had brought contributions for the Christmas‐tree, of which our children had the nominal charge, and with these gifts and our own it turned out quite a royal success. Presents of useful garments, flannels, boots, mittens, woollen shirts, petticoats, and comforters, were stowed away beneath the lower branches, while all visible parts were hung with the toys and fruits, lights and ribbons, that so delight children. Gilt walnut‐shells were a prominent decoration, and right at the apex of the tree was fixed a “Christ‐child,” that thoroughly German development, an image of the Infant Saviour, holding a starred globe in one hand and a standard in the other. A _crèche_ had also been prepared in the Lady‐chapel, a lifelike representation of those beautiful Christmas pictures seen to such perfection in the large churches of Italy. Munich figures supplied the place of wax models, however, and were a decided improvement.

Many people from the village had asked leave to come in and look at these peculiar decorations; but, as few of them were Catholics, it had been thought better to wait till the third Mass on Christmas day to open the chapel to the public. Christmas eve was a very busy day, and towards five o’clock began the great task of welcoming the rest of the expected guests. This was done in no modern and languid fashion; the servants, clad in fur caps and frieze greatcoats, stood near the door with resinous torches flaring in the still night air—it was quite dark at that early hour—and the host and hostess welcomed them at the very threshold. The children helped them to take off their wraps, and held mistletoe sprigs over their bended heads as they reached up to kiss them. Indeed, mistletoe was so plentifully strewn about the house that it was impossible to avoid it, but we had so far eschewed the freedom of the past as to consider this custom more honored in the breach than in the observance. The children and the servants, however, made up for our carelessness.

Very little toilet was expected for a seven o’clock dinner (we were not fashionable people), but we found that our well‐meant injunctions had hardly been obeyed. For the sake of the picturesque, so much the better, I thought. One of our friends had actually donned a claret‐colored velvet suit, with slippers to match, embroidered with gold; and, when we looked at each other in silent amusement, the wearer himself smiled round the circle, saying pleasantly:

“Oh! I do not mind being noticed. In fact, I rather like it—this was a lady’s fancy, you see.”

“How, how?” we asked eagerly.

“Well,” answered the Londoner, a regular drawing‐room pet, and a very clever society jester, “I was challenged to a game of billiards by a fair lady, the Duchess of ——. She said to me, ‘And pray _do_ wear something picturesque.’ I bowed and said, ‘Your grace shall be obeyed.’ I happened to have some loose cash about me. I could not wear uniform, because I did not belong even to the most insignificant of volunteer regiments, and I went to my tailor. His genius was equal to the occasion, and this was the result. I played with the duchess, and she won,”—the hero of the velvet coat was an invincible billiard champion.—“As I have the dress by me, I take the liberty of wearing it occasionally in the country. It is too good to be hidden, isn’t it?”

So he rattled on till dinner was announced. It was a merry but frugal meal. The mince‐pies and plum‐pudding crowned with blue flame, the holly‐ wreathed boar’s head of romance, were not there; they were reserved for to‐morrow. So with the “wassail‐bowl,” the fragrant, spirituous beverage of which each one was to partake, his two neighbors standing up on each side of him, according to the old custom intended as a defence against treachery; for once it had happened that a guest whose hands were engaged holding the two‐handled bowl to his lips was stabbed from behind by a lurking enemy, and ever after it became _de rigueur_ that protection should be afforded to the drinker by his neighbor on either side.

The fare to‐night was still Advent fare, but, after dinner, Christmas insisted upon beginning. We were told that the “mummers” from the village were come, and waited for leave to begin their play. They were brought into the hall, and the whole company stood on the steps leading up to the drawing‐rooms. The scenery was not characteristic—a broad oaken staircase, a Chinese gong, the polished oak flooring, the massive hall‐door. The actors themselves, seven or eight in number, dressed in the most fantastic and extemporized costume, now began the performance; and but for the venerable antiquity of the farce, it was absurd and obscure enough to excite laughter rather than interest. The children were wild with delight, and were with difficulty restrained from leaping the “pit” and mingling with the actors on the “stage.” Indeed, for many days after nothing was heard among them but imitations of the “mummers.” There was a grave dialogue about “King George,” then a scuffle ensued, and one man fell down either wounded or in a fit. The doctor is called; the people believe the man dead, the doctor denies this, and says, “I will give him a cordial, mark the effect.” The resuscitated man afterwards has a tooth drawn by the same quack, who then holds up the tooth (a huge, unshapely equine one provided for the occasion), and exclaims: “Why, this is more like a horse’s tooth than a man’s!” I never could make out the full meaning of the “mummers’” play; but, whether it was a corruption of some older and more complete dramatic form, or the crude beginning of an undeveloped one, it certainly was the characteristic feature of our Christmas at Aldred. It took place regularly every year, without the slightest deviation in detail, and always ended in a mournful chorus, “The Old Folks at Home.” After the actors had been heartily cheered, and the host had addressed to them a few kind words of thanks and recognition, they were dismissed to the kitchen, to their much coveted entertainment of unlimited beer. There they enacted their performance once more for the servants, who then fraternized with them on the most amiable terms.

Meanwhile, our party were gradually collecting round the wood‐fire in the corridor. It was a bitter cold night, the snow was falling noiselessly and fast, and the wind howled weirdly through the bare branches of the distant trees. Our old aunt remarked, in her gentle way:

“One almost feels as if those poor owls were human beings crying with cold.”

“We look like a picture, mother,” somewhat irrelevantly answered her son after a slight pause; “the antique dresses of many of us are quite worth an artist’s study.”

Mrs. Burtleigh, whose blonde beauty was coquettishly set off by a slight touch of powder on the hair, and a becoming Marie Antoinette style of _négligé_, here pointedly addressed the traveller.

“Sir Pilgrim,” she said, “did you ever think of home when you had to spend a Christmas in outlandish countries?”

“Sometimes,” answered “Jim” absently, his eyes wandering towards Miss Houghton, who stood resting her head against a carved griffin on the tall mantel‐piece.

She caught his glance, and said half saucily:

“Now, if it was not too commonplace, I should claim a story—Christmas eve is not complete without a story, at least so the books say.”

“If it were required, I know one that is not quite so hackneyed as the grandmothers’ ghosts and wicked ancestors we are often surfeited with at Christmas,” replied her friend quickly. The whole circle drew closer around the fire, and imperiously demanded an explanation.

“But that will be descending to commonplace,” pleaded the traveller.

“Who knows? It may turn out the reverse, when you have done,” heedlessly said Mrs. Burtleigh.

“Well, if you will have it, here it is. Mind, now, I am not going to give you a three‐volume novel, full of padding, but just tell you one incident, plain and unadorned. So do not look forward to anything thrilling or sensational.

“Some years ago, I was in Belgium, hastening home for Christmas, and spent three or four days in Bruges. I will spare you a description of the grand old city, and come to facts. I was just on the point of leaving, and had got to the railway station in order to catch the tidal train for Ostend, when a man suddenly and hurriedly came up to me, an old servant in faded livery, who, without breathing a word, placed a note in my hand, and was immediately lost to sight in the crowd. The waiting‐room was dimly lighted, but I could make out my own name, initials and all, on the envelope. In my confusion, I hurried out of the station, and, stepping into a small _hôtellerie_, I opened the mysterious note. It was very short: ‘Come at once to No. 20 Rue Neuve.’ The signature was in initials only. The handwriting was small and undecided. I could hardly tell if it were a man’s or a woman’s. I knew my way to the Rue Neuve, not a really new street, but one of Bruges’ most interesting old thoroughfares. No gas, a narrow street, great gaunt _portes‐cochères_, and projecting windows on both sides, the pavement uneven, and a young moon just showing her crescent over the crazy‐looking houses—such was the scene. I soon got to No. 20. It was a large, dilapidated house, with every sign about it of decayed grandeur and diminished wealth. Two large doors, heavily barred, occupied the lower part of the wall; above were oriels and dormers whose stone frames were tortured into weird half‐human faces and impossible foliage. No light anywhere, and for bell a long, hanging, ponderous weight of iron. I pulled it, and a sepulchral sound answered the motion. I waited, no one came; I thought I must have mistaken the number. Taking out the letter, however, I made sure I was right. I pulled the bell again a little louder, and heard footsteps slowly echoing on the stone flags of the court within. _Sabots_ evidently; they made a rattle like dead men’s bones, I thought. A little _grille_, or tiny wicket, was opened, and an old dame, shading her candle with one brown hand, peered suspiciously out. Apparently dissatisfied, she closed the opening with a bang, muttering to herself in Flemish. It was cold standing in the street, and, as the portress of this mysterious No. 20 made no sign of opening the door for me, I was very nearly getting angry, and going away in no amiable mood at the unknown who had played me this too practical joke. Suddenly I heard the _grille_ open again, very briskly this time, and a voice said in tolerably good French:

“ ‘Monsieur’s name is—?’

“ ‘Yes,’ I replied rather impatiently.

“ ‘Then will monsieur wait an instant, till I undo the bars?’ A great drawing of chains and bolts on the inside followed her speech, and a little gate, three‐quarters of a man’s height, was opened in the massive and immovable _porte‐cochère_. I stepped quickly in, nearly overturning the old dame’s candlestick. She wore a full short petticoat of bright yet not gaudy blue, and over it a large black circular cloak which covered all but her clumsy sabots. Her cap was a miracle of neatness, and her brown face, wrinkled but cheery, reminded me of S. Elizabeth in Raphael’s pictures. She said glibly and politely:

“ ‘Will monsieur give himself the trouble to wait a moment?’

“She disappeared with her candle, leaving me to peer round the courtyard, where the moon’s feeble rays were playing at hide‐and‐seek behind the many projections. Almost as soon as she had left, she was with me again, bidding me follow her up‐stairs. ‘My master is bed‐ridden,’ she explained. ‘Since he got a wound in the war of independence against Holland, he has not been able to move. Monsieur will take care, I hope, not to excite him; he is nervous and irritable since his illness,’ she added apologetically.