Chapter XLVII: Part IV: The Immolation (2)

Cologne owes its origin to a Roman camp established by Marcus Agrippa. The Emperor Claudius, at the request of his wife, Julia Agrippina, daughter of Germanicus and mother of Nero, sent a colony of Roman veterans, A.D. 50, named the town after her _Colonia Agrippina_, and it then became the capital of the Province of Germania Secunda. Vitellius was here proclaimed Emperor of Rome, A.D. 69; Trajan here received from Nerva the summons to share his throne; the usurper Sylvanus was also proclaimed emperor here in 353; a few years later Cologne was taken by the Franks; Childeric made it his residence in 464; and Clovis was here proclaimed king in 508.

During the reign of Pepin, it was the capital of the kingdoms of Neustria and Austrasia. Bruno, Duke of Lorraine, was the first of its archbishops who exercised the temporal power, with which he was invested by his brother, Otho the Great. From that time the town increased rapidly in wealth and splendor, and shortly after became one of the principal emporiums of the Hanseatic League; the commerce of the East was here concentrated, and direct communication with Italy constantly kept up. In 1259, the town acquired the privilege by which all vessels were compelled to unload here and reship their cargoes in Cologne bottoms.

At this period it had a population of 150,000, and could furnish 30,000 fighting men in time of war. In the XIIIth century, there was a mutiny among the weavers; 17,000 looms were destroyed; the rebellious workmen were banished from the city; and that, together with the expulsion of the Jews in 1349, did great injury to the town, the number of whose inhabitants was reduced in 1790 to 42,000, of whom nearly one‐third were paupers. Then came the devastating wars which succeeded the maelstrom of the French Revolution, when in the general upheaval empires and kingdoms disappeared, new political combinations were made which changed the map of Europe, and the Rhine became the frontier of the French Empire.

Cologne was nominally French, but the hearts of the people were German—as German as the most ardent worshipper of the “New God,” as Von Bolanden calls the new Empire, the child of Bismarck and Von Moltke. After Waterloo, the Holy Alliance made another partition of the kingdoms and peoples, and Cologne shook off the French yoke, and returned to her national ways and customs. One great cause of its decay had been the closing of the navigation of the Rhine, which restriction was removed in 1837, and, since then, trade has greatly revived, and the town been much improved.

Many of the old streets have been widened and paved, and a considerable portion of waste ground covered with new buildings. The opening of the railways to Paris, Antwerp, Ostend, Hamburg, and Berlin has greatly added to its commercial prosperity, and Cologne bids fair to resume its former position among the chief cities of Europe. Cologne was formerly called the “Holy Cologne,” and the “Rome of the North”—titles which she owed to the number of relics and churches she possessed.

At one time, the city contained 200 buildings devoted to religious uses. These gradually diminished, until in 1790 their number was reduced to 137. During the French Revolution, they were shamefully plundered, the convents suppressed, and their property confiscated; so that at present there are not more than twenty churches and seven or eight chapels; but many other ecclesiastical buildings still remain, used as warehouses and chapels.

Maria im Capitol, so named from its having been built on the site of the Roman capitol, stands on an eminence reached by a flight of steps. The Frankish kings had a palace close by, to which Plectruda, the wife of Pepin, retired in 696, having separated from her husband on account of his attachment to Alpais, the mother of Charles Martel. In 700, she pulled down the capitol, and erected a church on its site, to which she attached a chapter of canonesses. Until 1794, the senate and consuls repaired hither annually on S. John’s day to assist at Mass, when the outgoing Burgomasters solemnly transferred the insignia of office to the newly elected, who were each presented with a bouquet of flowers by the abbess.

The convent no longer exists, but there is a large cloister of the XIth century at the west end of the church, which was restored a few years ago. In this church, there are mural paintings of the early Cologne school, representing the wise and foolish virgins, numberless saints, the raising of Lazarus, and the founders of the church with their children. As in duty bound, Plectruda is properly conspicuous; her effigy in basso‐rilievo beneath the great east window is a very interesting work of the Xth century, and, on one of the towers, her sculptured figure appears between two angels, who are conducting her to her eternal home.

All the churches are more or less interesting, none more so than that of S. Gereon, founded in the IVth century. S. Gereon was the commander of a Roman legion, and he and his companions, 700 in number, were murdered by order of Diocletian upon the spot where the church was built by the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine.

The style is Byzantine, and very singular. The body of the church, preceded by a large portico, presents a vast decagonal shell, the pillars of whose internal angles are prolonged in ribs, which, centring in a summit, meet in one point and form a cupola, one of the latest examples known. A high wide flight of steps, rising opposite to the entrance, leads to an altar with an oblong choir behind it, from whence other steps again ascend to the sanctuary, a semicircular apse, belted, like the cupola, by an open gallery with small arches and pillars resting on a panelled balustrade.

The rotunda is surrounded by ten chapels, in which are the tombs of the martyrs. The walls are encrusted with their skulls, and, in the subterranean church, the pavement and walls are formed by the tomb‐stones covering the holy dust. In the lower church is the tomb of S. Gereon, and in one of the chapels is a mosaic pavement laid in the time of the Empress Helena. Behind the stalls of the clergy are hangings of Gobelin tapestry, portraying the history of Joseph and his brethren.

The baptismal font of porphyry, immensely large, was a present from Charlemagne; and, as the lid is too ponderous for any one to lift, there is a little machine that takes it off when required. We remained a long while in this very delightful church, and, by the time we left, what with Helen and Constantine, Diocletian and Charlemagne, we felt quite like an animated verd‐antique, so intensely Roman and Catholic had we become.

Afterwards we proceeded to S. Ursula’s, where the cruel Roman emperor was exchanged for the barbarian Huns. S. Ursula’s history was done in English by the old sexton, who finished every sentence by assuring us that S. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins met with their untimely fate from the barbarian Huns, who massacred them in cold blood. We made a stride of a few centuries, became Gothic, and extended our hatred to the barbarian Huns. As in S. Gereon, the bones of the martyrs are built in the walls for a space of two feet the whole extent.

In the Golden Chamber we saw the shrine of S. Ursula, the relics of S. Margaret, a thorn from the crown of Our Lord, and one of the vases used at the marriage feast of Cana, that witnessed the first miracle of the God‐ man. Link by link we were carried to the days when Our Lord was incarnate on the earth; we do not need such testimony to assure us of the truth of our holy faith, but, when we touch the vase that has been touched by Our Lord, our senses are awed by the thought of the God‐like condescension of him who became man, who lived like us, who mingled in our joys and sorrows, that we might become greater than the angels.

The Cathedral of Cologne, the queen of pointed architecture, erected on the site of a church founded in 814 by Archbishop Hildebold, and more beautiful than even we could imagine it, familiar as we were with it by picture and description, was commenced in August, 1248, by Archbishop Conrad, of Hochstaden. The works were for some years pushed on with great activity under the direction of Master Gerard von Rile, a builder of whom nothing more is known than that he died before 1302.

In 1322, the choir was completed and consecrated; then the building went slowly on until 1357, when the works were discontinued for a long time. In 1796, the cathedral was converted by the French into a warehouse, and it had very nearly become a ruin in 1807, when the brothers Sulpice and Melchior Boisserée drew attention to it by their illustrated work on its history. In 1824, the work of restoration was commenced, but little progress was made until, in 1842, the idea of completing the cathedral was conceived, and an association was formed to collect subscriptions for this purpose; and now the entire edifice will soon be finished if the works are carried on as zealously as they have been of late.

The glorious roof, arching 150 feet in the air, is magnificent; every day new beauties are added; four hundred men are daily at work, the stones are all cut, and in ten years at least this triumph of genius will be ready to receive the homage of all true lovers of art. The shrine of the Three Kings is superb—gold adorned with precious stones. There are the heads of the three men who came in faith, and bowed in all their pride and majesty before the infant Jesus in the manger; their names, Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, are encrusted in rubies above the crowns that encircle their brows. Their bodies were brought from S. Eustorgio, in Milan, by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, after the taking of that city, and presented by him to Archbishop Rainoldo, who deposited them in the ancient cathedral July 23, 1164; from whence they were removed into the present chapel in 1337.

Among the treasures of the cathedral is a splendid ostensorium, one of the finest in the world, presented by some sovereign; another, not so handsome, sent by Pius IX.; and the cross and ring, given to the present archbishop by Kaiser William; both are of diamonds and emeralds, the ring, an immense emerald, surrounded by four circles of diamonds. The man who showed the church prided himself upon his English; would call the archbishops architects: “This is the statue of Engelbert, the first _architect from_ Cologne.” And when we innocently inquired if the architects wore mitres and copes, he impressively repeated his remark; so we are still in doubt whether the archbishops built the cathedral or the architects dressed like bishops!

Wandering one day through the aisles of the cathedral, we paused for a while to gaze upon something beautiful that attracted our attention. It was behind the high altar; we were standing between it and the Chapel of the Magi, when, by chance, we looked down, and on the slab at our feet we saw in large letters, “Marie de’ Medici”—no date, no epitaph. So much for human greatness! Under that stone, trodden daily by hundreds, was the heart of Marie de’ Medici, one of the powerful family that gave to the church Leo X. and Clement VII., the descendant of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the widow of Henri Quatre, the mother of Louis XIII., the ex‐Regent of France. Banished from France, the inexorable hostility of Richelieu pursued her wherever she sought refuge. No crowned head dared shelter her.

One heart was true, one man was found who remembered in her adversity that she had favored him in the days of her prosperity. When, in the zenith of her power, she built the Luxembourg, she sent for Rubens to adorn it with the creations of his genius; she loaded him with favors, sent him on diplomatic missions to restore peace between Philip IV. of Spain and Charles I. of England. Both monarchs responded to her wishes, showered honors upon the artist‐diplomat, and Charles I. knighted him, and then presented him with the sword which had been used for the ceremony.

Genius is a power. Richelieu could command kings on their thrones, and the refugee queen was abandoned by all—by those who should have been bound to her by the ties of kindred, of position, by the claims of misfortune. England, Spain, Holland, refused her entrance; only in the free city of Cologne could she find sanctuary, and that sanctuary was the house of the noble, chivalric artist, Pierre Paul Rubens, whose brave heart quailed not before the wrath of the most powerful man of his age.

With loving care and respect he watched over her, soothed her in her dying agony, and held her in his arms when she breathed her last sigh. The house of Rubens still remains, and the room in which Marie de’ Medici died is preserved with the greatest care. When we visited it, we felt as though we were treading on holy ground, as in a shrine made sacred by a noble deed; for what more royal, more heroic, more Christian, than the brave, grateful heart that dared power to shelter misfortune?

Meanwhile that Marie de’ Medici lived and died in poverty in Cologne, Richelieu was at the apogee of his glory. King, nobles, courts, cowered beneath his glance. The conspiracy of Cinq‐Mars was quelled; his head had paid the penalty of his youthful folly. Richelieu, satisfied and avenged, left Lyons for Paris, carried on the shoulders of his attendants in a kind of furnished room, for which the gates of the cities through which he passed were demolished if they were too narrow to admit it. But the triumph was short‐lived. A few months after the death of Marie de’ Medici, her relentless persecutor followed her to the tomb, and her poor wearied body was removed to France and buried in S. Denis; but the heart was left in the Cathedral of Cologne—a mausoleum sufficiently splendid for any mortal dust.

Soon after leaving the house of Rubens, we came to another famous in Cologne; a large building, where, from one of the windows of the third story, two stone horses were contemplating the busy scene in the Neumarkt below; and then we heard the legend of the horses. Once upon a time this house was the residence of the wealthy family d’Andocht. Richmodis, the wife of Herr Mengis d’Andocht, died during the plague of 1357, and was buried with great pomp in the Church of the Apostles on the Neumarkt.

Her dressing attracted the notice of the sexton. He fancied he would like to have some of the gold and silver adornments; so the night after she was put into the vault he descended into it, opened the coffin, and took off some of the jewels. One of the rings would not move. To make the task easier, he cut her finger; she was only in a trance, and this summary process restored her; she sat up; the man rushed off affrighted. She managed to get out of the coffin. In his haste he had left his lantern behind; with it she made her way out of the church, and reached her home near by.

She knocked at the door; a servant opened it, and scampered off half dead with terror. She went to her husband’s room. He thought she was a ghost or devil; she told him she was his wife, as surely as that their horses would come up‐stairs and jump out of the window. As she spoke, the horses galloped up‐stairs, threw themselves out of the window; whereupon the husband acknowledged her to be his veritable wife. She soon recovered her health, lived for many years, and, to commemorate the wonderful event, the husband had the two horses done in stone and put in their respective panes of glass, where they have ever since remained, looking out of the window.

Now the house is a hospital, and we hope the patients are as much amused as we were at the effigies of the two well‐bred, obedient horses, who were as good at vouching for identity as Dame Crump’s little dog. In the Church of the Apostles, a faded Lent hanging is still preserved that was presented by Richmodis in gratitude for her wonderful deliverance from a living death.

The Rathhaus or Town Hall is a curious building, erected at different periods; the Hansa‐Saal is a fine room on the first floor, in which the meetings of that once powerful mercantile confederation were held; and at one end of it are nine statues holding escutcheons emblazoned with the arms of the Hanse Towns.

The _Musée_, a comparatively new creation, erected partly by the government, and partly by private subscription, contains many works of art. In the lower story are numerous Roman antiquities, found in or near Cologne; amongst them are busts of Cæsar, Germanicus, Agrippina, a statuette of Cleopatra, and a very fine head of Medusa, said to be larger and more beautiful than the Medusa Rondinini in the Glyptotheca at Munich. One gallery is filled with exquisite specimens of stained glass; the upper rooms are devoted to statuary and paintings, many of which are of the Düsseldorf school.

We were particularly struck with one, the “Triumph of S. Michael over Lucifer.” S. Michael is radiant, his sword flaming; and Lucifer, who is sinking into darkness, is terrible. There he is—no horned demon, but the beautiful fallen archangel, majestic and powerful; profound despair and gloom on his noble features, as the darkness overshadows him, and hell opens to receive him.

The people of Cologne are gay and sociable; in the afternoons, the Zoological Gardens are filled with children and nurses admiring the giraffes, elephants, and every other kind of animal belonging to earth, air, or water. An immense lion was a particular object of interest, as he had distinguished himself the day before we had the pleasure of seeing him by devouring his keeper. The Flora or Winter Garden is charming—a crystal palace, filled with fragrant plants, green vines garlanding the sides and roof, fountains playing, beautiful music well rendered by a good orchestra, and hundreds of people drinking coffee and smoking, who don’t bother themselves by receiving at home, but meet and gossip in the Flora, or the Opera House, to which they generally adjourn.

The Opera House is very pretty but miserably lighted, only two feeble gas‐ lights by the door. Prussian officers, however, abounded, and the glittering uniform shone in the _clair‐obscur_ like fire‐flies in Florida on summer evenings. Perhaps it was to add to the effect of “La Dame Blanche,” which was the opera we chanced to hear, that we were kept in such gloomy darkness; but, as the music was well executed, the time passed pleasantly.

One extraordinary event must be chronicled—we did not buy one bottle of Cologne in Cologne; we left the city of Jean Maria Farina, and only saw the outside of his shop. What with Gothic churches and relics, Roman towers and antiquities, time flew, and we found ourselves also flying off from Cologne on an express train, without one drop of the veritable _Eau‐ de‐Cologne_ in our possession. _Mirabile dictu!_

John.

In beauty, not above criticism; in courage, undaunted; in love, most generous and most forgiving; in patience, rivalling Job; in constancy, unswerving; in humility, without an equal.

After the above enumeration of qualities, it should be superfluous to add that John is a dog. It would be ridiculous to expect so much of a man. He is, moreover, a Skye‐terrier, well‐born and well‐bred.

To announce to John’s acquaintances that one was about to eulogize the dog would be to incur and deserve some such reply as that made by the Spartan to a rhetorician who announced his intention to pronounce an eulogium on Hercules: “An eulogium on Hercules?” repeated the Spartan. “Who ever thought of blaming Hercules?”

Our reply would be that we write, not for those who deny, but for those who never heard.

There is no shifting of scenes in our little drama. The unities are preserved with almost Grecian strictness; the writer, however, as chorus, claiming the privilege of being occasionally discursive.

_Scene._—A suburban summer residence in that most magnificent of seasons, autumn, “in that month of all months in the year,” October; furthermore, the most perfect of Octobers. The stone‐colored house is the only neutral bit in the landscape; all else is a glow of color. The fresh greensward recedes under flower‐bosses of solid brilliancy. A flower carpet, gayer than any loom of Turkey, Brussels, or France ever wove, lies under the clump of evergreens in a far corner of the estate. Tapestries of woodbine hang over balconies, and porches, and bay‐windows; and the noble trees that stand, two and two, in stately pairs, all about the place, and up the avenue, are a torchlight procession, which sunshine, instead of quenching, fires to a still more dazzling blaze. It is that picturesque time when ladies throw gay scarfs over the summer dresses they still wear; when the sky shakes out her violet mists to veil the too divine beauty of earth; that season of exquisite comfort when one has open windows and open fires; that delicious season when fruit is brought to the table still warm with the sunshine in which it finished ripening five minutes before. Above all, it is that season when people who are at all sympathetic are inclined to silence.

Mrs. Marcia Clay was not at all sympathetic. She was simply herself, a frivolous woman, with a strong will, and a Chinese wall of selfishness and self‐complacence built up on all sides of her. The soft “Hush!” on the lips of the Indian summer, when the soul of Nature plumes her wings for flight, she heard not. The suspense, the regret, the melancholy, the fleeting rapture of the season she perceived not. To her it was surely the fall of the year, when people get ready for the winter, lay in coal, buy new clothes, and go back to town.

Flounced to the waist in rattling silk, her fair hair furbelowed all over her head, and, apparently, pounds of gold hanging from her ears, thrust through her cuffs, dangling at her belt, strung about her neck, and fastened to the pin that held her collar, this lady sat in one of the pleasant parlors of her house, and talked as fast as her tongue could run.

The woman who listened was of another kind, one who might have come to something if she had been possessed of will and courage, but who, having a small opinion of herself, was only somebody by little spurts, which did no good, since they were always followed by unusual self‐abasement. She was not without a despairing sense of this incongruity, and had more than once bewailed in her own mind the fact that she was neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, but inclined to each in turn; had little wings which, as she spread them, changed to little fins, which, as she moved them, became little feet, that, when she would have walked, collapsed utterly, and left her floundering—a woman without moral vertebræ, who had been all her life the prey of people in whom the moral vertebræ were in excess. She was nothing in particular, physically, either, being gayish, oldish, tallish, weakish, and dressed in that time‐honored, thin plain black silk gown which is the infallible sign of genteel poverty, and which, at this instant, adorns the form that owns the arm that moves the hand that holds the pen that writes this history.

_Mrs. Marcia Clay._—“It is very provoking, my dear, but it can’t be helped. If I should intimate to him that our trunks are all packed to go in town, he would leave instantly. He is the most touchy of mortals. To be sure, I have invited him here again and again, but I expected him in summer‐time, not when we were on the point of moving, and had our very beds half made in the city. There’s nothing for it but to unpack, and pretend to be delighted. Fortunately, he amuses himself.”

The uncertain person in the black silk gown ventured to suggest that Mr. Bently might accompany them to town, and was met by a little shriek which made her jump.

“Fancy him in my blue satin or pink satin chamber! Why, my dear, he smokes, and—_chews! chews_, dear! Between you and me, he is a bear in his habits, a positive bear. If you will believe me, I have seen him wear slipshod shoes and crumpled linen. You should see him at home, in his den. An inky dressing‐gown that he wipes his pens on, old slippers with holes in them, books piled all about, and dust that you could write your name in! In that state he sits and writes hour after hour.”

Ah! Mrs. Clay & Co., who look at littleness through magnifying glasses, and are blind to all true greatness, the sole of this man’s slipshod shoe is cleaner than your tongue. There is no dust on his thoughts; there are no holes in the fabrics his brain weaves; and when he writes, far‐away lands that know you not, and kindred greatness nearer by, feel the electric spark that slips from his pen’s point.

“What a shocking person he must be!” says Miss Uncertainty, meaning to please. “I don’t wonder you won’t have him in town.”

“Goodness gracious, Miss Bird!” cried the lady, coloring up. “What can you be thinking of! Why, Mr. Bently is famous. He can afford to be eccentric. It is an honor to have him in one’s house. People have turned and looked at me when they heard that I am his cousin; and his name opens to me places that—well, everybody can’t enter. Then it is a very fine thing to have a gentleman in one’s parlors who can talk to those lions whom one doesn’t know what to say to, and who can tell what one’s pictures, and bronzes, and marbles mean, and translate from every language under the sun. I well remember a time when he won for me a perfect triumph over Mrs. Everett Adams. It was delicious. Mrs. Everett Adams is always picking up lions, especially learned and scientific ones, and, when Professor Porson came here, she monopolized him at once. You cannot conceive how odiously she behaved, nor what airs she assumed. One heard nothing but Porson, Porson, till I was sick of the name; and it was impossible to go anywhere, to theatre, opera, or concert, without seeing her sail down to the most conspicuous place, after everybody was seated, with Prof. Porson in her train. Well, one evening she brought him to our house, just to plague me, and we had half a dozen or so persons to meet him. It was an evening of torment, my dear. The professor was in the clouds, with Mrs. Everett Adams fluttering behind him, like a tail after a kite, and all the rest were in raptures, except me—I was extinguished. The professor knew what every bronze and marble was, and who made it, and if it was an original or a copy; and, in short, everything I had seemed as common as possible. As a last desperate resort, I brought out some old books in foreign languages that poor dear Clay had picked up. He was always collecting things of that sort. The professor turned them over with the tips of his fingers, and read a word here and there. Oh! he knew all about them. Yes; he had read them when he was a boy. But I had begun to suspect him. My poor husband used to say that, when a man will not own that there is anything he doesn’t understand, root and branch, he was always sure that that man was an impostor. So I took up two of the books that I saw he had passed over, and asked him to translate a passage for me. They looked about as much like a printed language as the figures on my carpet do. To my joy, he had to own that he couldn’t. They were Chaldaic, he said, and he had made but little study in that language. Mrs. Adams glanced angrily at me, and I smiled. Just at that moment, as good luck would have it, the door opened, and in came Cousin Bently. I flew at him with the books. Triumph, my dear! Never did I have such a rapturous moment. Cousin took the books up in his slow way, put up his eye‐glasses, and looked them over in such a superior manner that really my hopes rose. They were Arabic, I’ve forgotten what about, and he read out some passages, and translated them, all the company looking on. My dear, the Porson and Adams stock sank to less than one per cent. in an instant. The professor was red, and Mrs. Adams was pale. I could have hugged Cousin Bently on the spot, though his boots were not blacked, and his collar was in a positively shocking state.”

“How charming it must be to have him visit you!” says Miss Bird, wheeling about as the wind veered.

Poor thing! She did not mean to be insincere. She merely wanted to say the right thing, and didn’t care a fig about the matter, one way or the other.

“Charming!” repeated Mrs. Clay, with emphasis. “It gives a _tone_. Besides, it draws some people one likes to know. You should see Madame de Soi, the most exclusive of women, flutter round him like a butterfly round a—round a—well, really, I am at a loss for the word. It is impossible to call Cousin Bently a flower, unless one should make a pun about the seedy contents of his valise. I studied botany once, and I know a pun can be made of it. Madame knows no more and cares no more about his learning than a cat does, but she has tact, and does contrive to smile at the right time. I never could do that. When I smile, Cousin Bently is sure to push out his under lip, and stop talking. But she will look and listen with such rapture that you would positively think he were describing the dress the empress wore at the last ball; and sometimes she even says something that he will seem pleased with. That very evening of the Porson collapse she talked with him half an hour of _molecules_, whatever they are. I actually thought they were speaking of people. Fancy being called a molecule! Yes, Cousin Bently is a great credit, and a great convenience to me. Why, but for him, I couldn’t have gone to those stupid exclusive lectures of Mr. Vertebrare’s, where I yawned myself to death among the very cream of society.”

The lady paused for breath, and her companion, feeling obliged to say something, faltered out that she always feared those very clever persons.

“I should think you would after the experience you had with that dragon,” replied Mrs. Clay significantly.

Miss Bird colored, and was silent. “That dragon” was a rather difficult old lady, a Miss Clinton, with whom she had lived and suffered many years, and who had lately died.

“And so,” Mrs. Clay summed up, “I have Cousin Bently on my hands for a week or ten days, and must make the best of it. And”—suddenly lowering her voice—“speak of angels—ahem! Cousin Bently, allow me to make you acquainted with Miss Bird, an old schoolmate of mine.”

Miss Bird rose with a frightened air, dropped her eyes, blushed deeply, half extended her hand, and half withdrew it again, and stammered out, “Good‐morning, sir!” which was not a very felicitous greeting, the time of day being near sunset.

Mr. Bently acknowledged the introduction with rather a stately bow, gave the person before him a calm and exhaustive glance, protruded his under lip very slightly, without meaning to, and walked to the further end of the room.

“Why need people be such fools?” he muttered, half philosophical, half impatient. He had been, as all learned and even merely clever people must be, too much looked on as an ogre by the simple. It was rather provoking to see people shaking at his approach, as if he were going to compel them to talk Greek and calculus, or have their lives.

As the gentleman seated himself in an arm‐chair before a delightful bay‐ window, and facing the window, there was another addition to the company, and—enter our hero!

Reader, John!

A longish, curly‐haired quadruped with bright dark eyes full of merriment and kindliness, and teeth so beautifully white and even that it would be a privilege to be bitten by them. Of course he has undergone those improvements which man finds it necessary to make in the old‐fashioned plan of the Creator, and his clipped ears stand up pointed and pert, and his clipped tail is indeed less a tail than an epigram. But the bounding grace of his motions no scissors can curtail.

Do not imagine that John has entered the room properly, and stood still to be presented and described. Far from it. He bounced in through the window, as though shot from a mortar, and, while we have been writing this brief sketch of his person, has flown into the learned gentleman’s arms, kissed him enthusiastically a dozen times, pawed his hair into fearful disorder, made believe bite his nose and hands, with the utmost care not to hurt him in the least, pulled one end of his cravat out of knot, and threatened to overturn him, chair and all, by drawing back and rushing at him again like a little blue and yellow battering‐ram. His manner was, indeed, so overpowering that Mr. Bently had half a mind to be vexed, and could not help being disconcerted. His affection for dogs was entirely Platonic, and he had a theory that bipeds and quadrupeds should have separate houses built for them; but this creature had struck him as being the most honest and sensible being in the house, and had, moreover, taken to him.

Miss Bird looked askance at the scene in the bay‐window, and Mrs. Clay looked askance at Miss Bird, and wondered at her impudence and folly. Bird had blushed and dropped her eyes when she was introduced to the gentleman, and she was now watching him out of the corners of her eyes. Bird was an old maid, with a moderate annuity; Mr. Bently was an old bachelor, with next to nothing beside brains and a name. Bird must be set to rights. So much the lady’s actions told of her thoughts.

“I wish I dared send for Marian Willis here,” she whispered confidentially, watching the effect of her words. “Nothing would please me better than to bring those two together again. But Cousin Bently would suspect my drift, and, as likely as not, start off at once. Nothing annoys him so much as to see that any one is trying to get him married. Marian is in every way suitable, and between you and me, dear, I think they would both be glad to have a mediator, only they are too proud to own it. Everybody thought about ten years ago that they were engaged, and they certainly were in a fair way to be, when some lovers’ quarrel occurred, and they parted. You have never seen Miss Willis, have you?”

Yes; Bird had seen her at Miss Melicent Yorke’s wedding, and she was the grandest looking lady there. She wore a black velvet dress, buttoned up high with diamonds, and not another jewel about her. She had a pink half‐ open camellia in her bosom, and a wide‐open one in her hair. Clara Yorke said that the beautiful plainness of Miss Willis’ toilet made everybody else look all tags and ends. She gave the bride a rare engraving of some picture of The Visitation, which Miss Melicent didn’t half like, because the S. Elizabeth was on her knees, and because there was a crown carved in the frame just over the Virgin’s head. But the bridegroom had reconciled her to it, saying that motherhood is a crown to any woman. Mrs. Edith Yorke, Carl’s wife, who is now abroad, was very fond of Miss Willis, and used to call her “Your Highness.”

“Oh! their intimacy was because Mr. Carl Yorke was a Catholic,” interposed Mrs. Clay rather abruptly.

When Bird got talking of the Yorkes, she never knew when to stop; and the subject was not pleasant to her listener. Mrs. Clay had tried to be intimate with the family, and had signally failed. Always kind and courteous, there still seemed to be an invisible crystalline wall between them and her.

“Marian’s religion is her one fault. It may be possible that she and Cousin Bently disagreed about that, though it would be hard to find out what he believes, or if he believes anything. He defends every religion you attack, and attacks every religion you defend.”

“But do you think she would marry him?” asked Bird incredulously; and her glance toward the window became depreciatory and critical, instead of awful.

Mr. Bently, as a learned man, was to be regarded with fear and admiration; but as a bridegroom—that was another thing.

“Why, she is handsome and rich.”

“What if she is?” asked the other tartly. “It only makes her more suitable. But she is not rich, though she lives with a rich old uncle, who may leave her something. She is in every way suited to Cousin Bently. He would never marry an inferior woman.”

This last assertion Mrs. Clay made very positively, for the reason that she was mortally afraid it was not true. Her private opinion was that Mr. Bently must have been very lonely in his bachelor lodgings before he came to visit her, and that he might easily be induced to marry even Bird, rather than live alone any longer.

Meantime, the object of their conversation, having put the vociferous John away, and induced him to lie at his feet, instead of pervading his neck and face, sat gazing out through the window. He certainly was not an eminently beautiful man, neither was he a pink of nicety in his dress, though he abhorred untidiness in others, particularly in women. His form was rather fine, but his features were too strong for grace, his hair was growing gray, and his teeth were discolored by his odious beloved tobacco. There was something a little neglected in his appearance. Evidently he needed some one with authority to remind him, when occasion demanded, that his cravat was horribly awry, that he had forgotten to smooth his hair down since the last time he combed it up with his ten fingers, and that, really, that collar must come off. In fine, he needed an indulgent wife, who would look out for him constantly, but with discretion, never intruding the cravat and collar question into his sublime moments.

Was he conscious of something lacking in his life, that his expression was less the gravity of the man of thought than the sadness of the lonely man? Something ailed him—physical sickness, no doubt, for his face was flushed, and his eyes heavy—but some trouble of the mind also. He looked across the lawn, that was bounded by a dense line of autumn‐colored trees, with a sky of brilliant clearness arching over. Betwixt sapphire and jasper the low purple dome of a mountain pushed up, making a background for a shining cross that might be suspended in air for any support visible to him who gazed on it. But he had seen that cross before, and his mind, leaping over the few intervening miles, followed down from its sunlighted tip and touched a slim gray tower and a vine‐covered church, and, looking through the gay rose‐window over the chancel, saw a tiny lambent flame floating in and fed by sacred oil of olives. Mentally he stood before the church door, saw the grove of beeches that hid it from the road, saw through those heavy boughs the green slope of a lawn near by and the mansion that crowned its summit. But in one respect the eyes of the seer were less true to the present than to the past, for they beheld roses, instead of autumn colors, wreathing pillar, porch, and balcony.

In this house Marian Willis lived. He sat and recollected all his intercourse with her, from the first pleasant dawn of friendly regard and sympathy, growing up to something brighter and closer, yet scarcely defined, to its sudden extinguishment. His acquaintance with her had been like a day that breaks in silent and cloudless light, and is shut in by a cold and smothering fog before its noon. What had been expressed to her of all that sweetness he found in her society? What to him of the pleasure she seemed to feel in his? Nothing that had other utterance than silent looks and actions. What had separated them? A mist, a fog, an impalpable yet irresistible power. Some tiny wedge had been inserted that gave a chance for pride to rush in and thrust their lives apart. There had been a slight reserve that grew to coldness and thence to alienation. Who does not know how those many littles make a mickle? Possibly a certain gallant officer, just home from the wars, with his arm in a sling, and a sabre‐ scar across his temple, had had something to do with the trouble. Certainly the last mental picture Mr. Bently had carried away from his last visit at Mr. Willis’ was of this same officer walking in the garden with Marian Willis leaning on his sound arm, and listening to the tale of his adventures as women always do and always will listen to soldiers who bring their wounds to illustrate their stories.

On that occasion, Mr. Bently had returned to his cousin’s house and behaved in what he considered a very reasonable manner. He locked himself into his chamber, let in all the light possible, placed himself before the mirror, and critically examined the reflection he saw there. There was no glorious sabre‐wound across his temple, showing where he had once wrestled with death, and come off conqueror; but, instead, there were long, faint, horizontal lines beginning to show on his forehead—mementoes of the silent combat with time, and of anxious quest in search of hidden truth. There were no crisp, fair curls shining over his head; the brown hair was straight and short, and here and there a white hair rewarded the search for it. The soldier’s large violet eyes flashed like jewels; but these eyes in the mirror were no brighter than wintry skies, a calm, steady blue that a planet might look through, perhaps, but that were not used to lightning. The soldier was clad in a trim uniform that set off well a form of manly grace, the stripe that glimmered down the leg, the band, like a lady’s bracelet, that bound the sleeve, the golden eagle outspread on either shoulder, all helping to make a gallant picture; the raiment reflected with pitiless fidelity by the mirror before him was decidedly neutral. No one could call it picturesque nor even elegant of its kind. It was simply calculated to escape censure.

Having made a full survey and, as he thought, a fair comparison, this self‐elected judge then pronounced sentence on the person whose reflection he gazed at.

“You are a fool!” he said, with a conviction too deep for bitterness. “What is there in you that a fair and charming woman could prefer? Bah! She prizes you as she does those vellum Platos and Homers that she admires because others do, but cannot read a word of. When she sinks into her arm‐ chair for that hour of rest before dressing for dinner, does she take with her a book of Greek or of logic? No; she reads the poet or the novelist. You have nothing to do with her more intimate life.”

Thus had the scholar decided, gazing at his own reflection in the mirror, seeing there only the shell of the man, and that not at its best, at its worst rather. The kindling of intelligence, the scintillating of sharp intellectual pursuit, the soft radiance which dawning love gave him when he was shone upon by the beloved object—those he saw not. He saw only a fool.

So far, so good. But he had not finished the work. A fool may be miserable, may be ruined by his folly, even while owning it. He must not only prove the vanity of hoping, but the vanity of loving. He must remove the halo from his idol’s brow, not rudely, but with all the coolness and gentleness of reason. What, after all, were beauty and grace, a sweet voice and smile, and gracious speaking? He set himself to analyze them, physiologically, chemically, and morally.

So the botanist analyzes a flower, and when he has destroyed its ravishing perfume, and that exquisite combination which constituted its individuality—a combination man can separate, but which only God can form—he points to the fragments, and says, “That is a rose!”

But suppose that, even while he speaks, those withering atoms should stir and brighten, the anthers should gather again their golden pollen, and hang themselves once more on each slender filament, the petals blush anew, and rustle into fragrant crowding circles, and a most rosy rose should rise triumphantly before him!

Some such experience had Mr. Bently when he had finished his work of demolition. Turning coldly away from the ruins of what had been so fair, he walked to the window to take breath, and saw there before him the living woman complete, her soul welding with immortal fire every characteristic and mood into a being irresistibly lovely, baffling, and—disdainful. She stood in the garden where Mrs. Clay had purposely detained her beneath his window, and she stood there unwillingly. Only a social necessity had brought her to the house, and she had determined that she would not, if it could be helped, meet that gentleman who, from being a daily visitor of her own, had suffered three days to pass during which he had once or twice talked with her uncle over the gate, but had never approached her.

Since that hour when, looking from his window, he had seen her sail past without raising her eyes, Mr. Bently had been haunted at times by two antagonistic visions—the rose dissected, which he viewed with indifference, succeeded by the rose full‐blown, triumphant in unassailable sweetness.

He thought it all over now as he sat looking out of Mrs. Clay’s eastern bay‐window. And having thought it over once, it began to go through his mind again, and still again. The various scenes passed, one by one, slowly, like persons in a procession, and he gazed at them from first to last; and there was the first again! He had had enough of it, but it would not stop. His head was aching, and feeling somewhat light besides. He pressed his forehead with his hands, and tried to think of something else, even if it were no more pleasant subject than the cold he must have taken to make him so sore from head to foot. But still that procession moved with accelerating speed. He spoke to John, tired and annoyed himself a little with the creature’s antics, then leaned back in his chair, and let his brain whirl.

Certainly he was ill; but nothing else was certain. Whether to go or stay, to speak or remain silent, he could scarcely decide. When dinner was announced, instinct kept him conventional. He ate nothing, but he went through all the proper forms, with no more abstraction than might be attributed to his intellectual oddities. But dinner, with its inanities, over, he made haste to escape to his own room.

“Going out for a walk, cousin?” asked Mrs. Clay, as he passed her.

How the trivial question irritated him! He bowed, afraid to utter a word, lest it should be an offensive one. His nerves felt bare, his teeth on edge.

Miss Bird looked more deeply than her friend had, and in the one timid glance she gave the gentleman saw a painful trouble underneath his cool exterior.

“I hope he didn’t hear what we were saying of him before dinner,” she remarked apprehensively.

“No, indeed!” was the confident response. “He scarcely hears what you say to him, still less what is said of him.”

“But he looked displeased,” persisted the anxious Bird.

Mrs. Clay cast a sarcastic glance on her subordinate. “My dear,” she said with decision, “the less you occupy yourself with my cousin’s feelings, the better for you. Your solicitude will be quite thrown away.”

Bird sighed faintly, and resigned herself to being snubbed.

Mr. Bently walked up‐stairs slowly, dreading to be alone, and shut himself into his room; and, when there, desolation settled upon him. It is not pleasant to be sick in one’s own home, with loving and solicitous friends surrounding one with their cares, and taking every task from the weak hands; it is still less pleasant when, though friends are near, they are powerless to lift the burden which only those helpless hands can carry; but how far more miserable, how far more cruel than any other desolation on earth, is it when sickness falls upon one who must work, and the sick one is not only oppressed by the burden of duties unperformed, but is himself a burden, coldly and grudgingly tended, or tended not at all? Mr. Bently knew well the extent of his cousin’s friendship, and the worth of her Chinese compliments, and he would far rather have fallen in the street, and been left to the tender mercies of strangers, than fall ill in her house.

Morning came, and it was breakfast‐time, by no means an early hour. Mrs. Clay had put off the meal half an hour on her cousin’s account. “He has at least one polite habit—he does not rise early,” she said. “But then he is as regular as a clock in his late hour.”

He was not prompt this morning, however, for they waited ten minutes after breakfast was on the table, and rang a second bell, and still their visitor did not appear.

Miss Bird suggested that he had looked unwell the evening before, and might be unable to come down.

“Really, how thoughtful you are!” Mrs. Clay said with cutting emphasis. “I had quite forgotten. Perhaps, my son, you will go up and see if Miss Bird is right.”

“My son” objected to being made a messenger of. “If the old fellar wanted to sleep, let him sleep. Don’t you say so, Clem?”

Clementina always agreed with her brother; the two prevailed, and the “old fellar” was left to sleep, or toss and moan, or be consumed with fever and thirst, or otherwise entertain himself as he or fate should choose, while the family breakfasted at their leisure.

It is scarcely worth while to put Clementina and Arthur Clay in print. They are insignificant and, in a small way, disagreeable objects, and their like is often met with to the annoyance of many. The mental ignorance and lack of capacity which we lose sight of when they are overmantled by the loveliness of good‐will, in such as these become contemptible by being placed on pedestals of presumption and ill‐nature, and hateful when they are set as obstacles and stumbling‐blocks in the way of souls who would fain walk and look upward.

Breakfast over, and no Mr. Bently appearing, Mrs. Clay felt called on to make inquiries, and, accordingly, dispatched a servant to her cousin’s door, while she herself listened at the foot of the stairs. She heard a knock, but no reply, then a second knock, followed by the servant’s voice, as if in answer to some one within.

“Paper under the door, sir? Yes, sir!”

She was half way up the stairs by this time, and snatched the slip of paper which the man had found pushed out under Mr. Bently’s door. “What in the world can be the matter? Where are my eye‐glasses? Cousin Bently is such a frightful writer that, really—”

While the lady is adjusting her glasses, and her children and companion are gathering about her, we will read this document, for there will be no time afterward. It is short, and is strongly scented with camphor.

“I am ill, and, it is possible, may have small‐pox. It has been where I was a fortnight ago. Keep away from me, and send for a doctor.”

Confusion ensued. Screams resounded from the parlor; orders and counter‐ orders were given, only one fixed idea penetrating that chaos—to get away from the house as quickly as possible. Carriages were got out, silver and valuables piled into them by Bird, who alone would go upstairs, and who was made to do everything, and in less than half an hour the whole family started for the city. The servants, all but the gardener, had already fled.