Chapter XLVIII: Part IV: The Immolation (3)

“But who is to take care of Mr. Bently?” Bird asked, pausing at the carriage door.

“I shall give the gardener orders to get a doctor and nurse,” Mrs. Clay said impatiently, fuming with selfish terror.

“But I’m not afraid,” Bird hesitated. “I’ve been vaccinated. And it’s hard to leave him alone.”

“Nonsense!” cried the lady. “I shall allow nothing of the sort. It is not necessary, and, besides, it is not proper. Do get in, if you are going to town. It really seems to me, Miss Bird, that you are altogether too much interested in Mr. Bently.”

Then, at last, Bird perceived what was in the speaker’s mind, and, as most women would in such circumstances, laid down her better impulses at the feet of meanness. Crushed and ashamed, and, at the same time, weakly and despairingly angry, she took her place in the carriage, and listened in silence to the lamentations and complaints of her companions.

“How could Cousin Bently do such a thing? How could he come to me when he knew he had been so exposed?”

That Mr. Bently had only learned from the paper of the evening before to what he had been exposed, and had only thought during the night what might be the meaning of his illness, the lady did not inquire into.

At the garden gate stood James, the gardener. Mrs. Clay stopped long enough to give him hurried directions to get a doctor and nurse, and do all that was necessary for the invalid, then ordered the coachman to drive on.

“I hope John isn’t with us,” one of the young ones said presently. “He was round Cousin Bently all day yesterday.”

No; Bird, recollecting that fact also, had shut John into one of the chambers, and left him there. She ventured to hope that he would not be left to starve, but no one responded to her merciful wish.

The cause of all this terror and confusion had seen the departure of the family without being surprised at it. He had not undressed, but had lain on a sofa all night, and, when morning came, had written the warning which proved so effectual, and then sank into an arm‐chair near the window, longing for air. He expected the family to keep away from him, and was neither sorry nor indignant that they had removed themselves still further. Of course a doctor would be sent, and of course there was some one to take care of him. He sat and waited for that some one to enter. Perhaps it was James. He saw the gardener shut and fasten the gate after the carriage went out, and he heard the locking of the stable door. He waited, but no one came. Well, the house must be attended to first, and he would be patient, though thirst, and alternate fever and chills, and racking pains were tormenting him. He was annoyed, too, by John’s efforts to escape from the next room, and would have gone to release the creature but for the fear of spreading contagion.

A distant door opened and shut; he heard a distant heavy step, and thanked God that relief and companionship were at hand. But the sounds ceased, and no one came near him. He saw James, the gardener, laden with packages, hurry down the avenue, and disappear into the public road, and a thrill of fear shot through him. The scene outside swam before his eyes, and grew dark for a moment. Could it be that they had all gone away, and left him to die alone? No; he could not believe it! James had perhaps gone to bring the doctor. He would wait patiently, since wait he must.

An hour passed, and no one came. There was no sound in the house but that occasional whining and barking from the next room; no sound outside except when a carriage rolled swiftly by in the road. He saw no person coming. It was impossible to endure that thirst any longer. He went into the bathroom, and wet his hands and face, and drank of the tepid water there. His head reeled at sight of the stairs, and he did not dare to attempt to descend. Returning to his chamber, he fell on to the sofa, and, for the first time in his life, fainted; coming back to life again as though emerging from outer darkness, but not into light—into a sickening half‐ light, rather. So hours passed, and he knew without a doubt that he was utterly deserted, and that a lonely and terrible death threatened him. Could he do nothing to avert it? He recollected that Mrs. Clay had a medicine closet in the bathroom. Possibly, if he could reach it, something might be found there to relieve, if not to cure, him. What mountains molehills can change into sometimes! This man, so strong and full of life but a day before, now lay and gave his whole mind to planning how he should save himself a few steps in going to the bathroom again, how he could avoid the stairs, lest he should fall, and whether he could this time cross the corridor to release that troublesome, whining dog. Whenever, weary and confused, he lost himself a moment in a half sleep, that whining and scratching assumed terrible proportions in his imagination, and became the fierce efforts of wild beasts to reach him. He started up now and then, with wide‐open eyes, to assure himself that he was not in a menagerie; to fix in his mind the picture of that airy chamber, with its clear tints of green and amber, its open windows showing the long veranda outside, and the bright perspective of foliage and sky.

But when his eyelids drooped again, and he sank back into half sleep and half fainting, back came the painful phantoms to torment him till they were once more chased away for a time.

Toward evening he roused himself to make that difficult pilgrimage of fifty paces in search of healing and refreshment, bathed eagerly his face and head, and found his cousin’s medicine closet. But when he had reached that, his strength was nearly exhausted. He had only enough left to take down the laudanum bottle, and get back to his room with it. Laudanum might dull this pain, and quiet the excited nerves. Once more John must wait. He could not stop to release him.

The room in which the dog was confined had a window on the balcony that ran past Mr. Bently’s room. That window was open, but the blind was shut, and John, despairing of escape through the door, had turned all his efforts toward unfastening this blind, and had several times been near success, when the spring, flying back, had defeated him.

The invalid’s bath of cold water had refreshed him somewhat. He hated to take the laudanum. He had never been an intemperate man, and had always shrunk from swallowing anything which could in the least degree isolate his mind from the control of his will. He would bear the pain a little longer.

He lay there and thought, and visions of happy homes rose up before him. At this hour of early twilight, the lamps were being lighted, or people sat by firelight, and children, grown languid and sleepy with the long day’s play, leaned silent on their mothers’ laps. At this hour, men of thought, intellectual workers, laid aside the weightier labors of their profession to indulge in an exhilarating contention of wits, so much happier than other workers, in that their recreations do not retard, but rather accelerate their work. It is but dancing at evening with Terpsichore, or pacing with Calliope along the margin of the same road which he had travelled by day in a dusty chariot, or walked encumbered by his armor. In their lighter intellectual contests, what sparks were sometimes struck out to live beyond the moment that gave them birth! What random beams of light shot now and then into seeming nothingness, and revealed an unsuspected treasure!

All these scenes of social comfort and delight rose before the sufferer’s mind with tantalizing distinctness, fairer and fuller in the vision than he had ever known the reality to be. He felt like a houseless wanderer who, freezing and starving in the street, sees through lighted windows the warmth and joy of the home circle.

Mr. Bently was not a pious man. He had a deep sentiment of reverence, and a firm belief that somewhere there is an inflexible truth that deserves an obedience absolute and unquestioning. But controversy had spoiled him for religious feeling, which is, perhaps, too delicate for rough handling, and in the clash of warring creeds some freshness and spontaneity had been lost to his convictions. Reaching truth, winning battles for truth, he had been like a traveller at the end of a long journey, when he scarcely cares in his weariness for the goal attained, but must needs eat and sleep. He had spent too much time and strength in wiping away the mire flung on the garments of religion to be any longer quick in enthusiastic homage. “Pity ’tis, ’tis true.” The butterfly you would save from the net loses the down from its wings with your most careful handling; the friend you defend from calumny you dethrone even while defending. The feeling that dictated that brutal egotism, “Cæsar’s wife must not be suspected,” dwells in a less arrogant form in most human hearts, and rare indeed is that soul which sets its love as high, after even the most triumphantly refuted accusation, as it was before.

Desertion and imminent death chilled this man’s heart, and he had no mind to turn to God, save in a cold recognition of his power and wisdom. Love entered not into his thoughts, but despair did.

The pain increased, the dizziness came back. He stretched his hand for the glass and vial of laudanum, and tried with a shaking hand to pour out what he could guess to be an ordinary potion. There was no reason why he should suspect that that bottle might have been standing in the house so long as to have made even the smallest dose of its contents deadly. As he measured, and tried to recollect how much he should take, pouring out unknowingly what would have been for him Lethe indeed, a louder rattle and bang at the blind of the next room proclaimed the success of the four‐ footed prisoner. There was a scampering on the veranda, a dog’s head, eager and bright‐eyed, was thrust in at the window of the sick‐room, then, with an almost human cry of joy, John flew at its occupant.

Away went bottle and glass, breaking and spilling—no laudanum for Mr. Bently that day. Down went Mr. Bently among the sofa pillows, prostrated by the unexpected onset; and love, and delight, and absolute devotion, in the form of an uproarious Skye terrier unconscious and uncaring for risks, nestled in the breast of the deserted man, were all over his face and neck, and through his hair, and speaking as plainly as though human speech had been their interpreters.

When the man comprehended, recovering from his first confusion, reason and endurance stood aside and veiled their faces, and a greater than they took their place.

Through a gush of tears which were but the spray of a subsiding wave of bitterness, this soul raised its eyes, and beheld a new light. It lost sight of the Almighty in a vision of the Heavenly Father.

The flight that followed was painful, but not unsoothed. The dog, perceiving at once that his friend was ill, became quiet. He lay with head pressed close to the restless arm, and, if the sick man moaned, he answered with a pitying whine. Once he left the room, and wandered through the whole house in search of help, whined and scratched at every closed door, and, finding no one, came back with an air of distress and perplexity. Later, when Mr. Bently seemed very ill, John ran out onto the balcony, and barked loudly, as if calling for relief.

Morning came again, and the sick man’s pain gave place to a deathlike faintness, resulting from lack of nourishment. For thirty‐six hours nothing had passed his lips but water, and that no longer ran from the faucet when he tried it. He crept down‐stairs, stair by stair, holding by the balusters, like a little child. There was no water to be seen in the dining‐room, and he did not know where to find any. He reached the parlor, lay down on the floor, and prayed for death or for life—anything to put an end to that nightmare of misery. It seemed that death was coming. His hands and feet grew cold with an unnatural chill, and, though the morning sunshine poured through the windows, all looked dim to his eyes. His senses seemed to be slowly receding, without pain, without any power or wish on his part to recall them. He lay and waited for death.

And while he waited, as one hears sounds in a dream he heard a door open and shut, then a quick, light step that ran up‐stairs. John, standing over his friend, left him, and rushed to the parlor door, barking wildly, but was unable to get out, the door having swung to. In vain he tried it with his paws, and thrust his small nose into the crack. It was too heavy for him to move.

Suddenly, while Mr. Bently gazed with languid, half unconscious eyes at the creature, the door was pushed wide open, and a woman stood on the threshold. She was neither young nor old, but simply at the age of perfection, which is a variable age, according to the person. Her face was a full oval, but white now as hoar‐frost. All its life seemed to centre in the large hazel eyes that were piercing with a terrified search. She wore her fair hair like a crown, piled high above the forehead in glossy coils like sculptured amber. Over one temple a black and gold moth was poised, as though it had just alighted there, its wings widespread. The long black folds of a velvet robe fell about her superb form, sweeping far back from her swift but suddenly arrested step. Scintillating fringes of gold quivered against the large white arms, edged the short Greek jacket, and ran in a single flash down either side of the train. A diamond cross lay like a sunbeam on her bosom, a single diamond twinkled in each small ear.

There was but an instant’s pause, then she crossed the room quickly, and knelt by him.

“My God! my God!” she murmured, and lifted his head on her arm. “What fiendish cruelty!”

Her touch and voice recalled him to himself. He tried to put her away. “Leave me, Marian, I beg of you! Do not endanger yourself for me!”

But even while bidding her go, every nerve in him grew alive with the joyous conviction that he would not be obeyed, and that, danger or no danger, she would not desert him. Here were strength, help, and the power to command. She brought the world with her, this queenly woman, who had not even snatched the gloves from her hands since last night’s ball, but had hurried to seek news of him, after the first confused rumor, to call doctor and nurse, to rush to him herself with all the speed her panting horses could make.

“Leave you? Never!”

He asked no questions, but resigned himself. How delightful the sickness, how sweet the pain, that led to this! How thrice blessed the desertion that gave her to him!

In half an hour, the doctor had come and given his decision. Mr. Bently’s illness was merely a violent cold with fever, and a few days of careful nursing would make all right. In another half hour, he was established in a pleasant chamber in Mr. Willis’ house, with a nurse in close attendance, the whole family anxiously ministrant, John an immovable fixture in the sick‐room; and, later, Mrs. Marcia Clay besieging the house for news of poor dear Cousin Bently, and protesting and explaining to the very coldest of listeners, declaring that nothing but her duty to her family, etc.; and what was the meaning of that broken bottle and glass, and ineradicable laudanum stain on the carpet in her house? Was it possible that Cousin Bently had thought of taking any of that terrible stuff that she meant to have thrown away ages before? And would they bring down John? Arthur had asked for him.

Some one went to Mr. Bently’s room for John, but came back without him. The invalid was reported to have flown into something like a passion on learning the messenger’s errand, and to have held the dog firmly in his arms.

John was his! No one else should have him. Whatever crime it might be called to refuse to give him up—stealing, embezzling, false imprisonment—he was ready to be accused and convicted of it, and would go to jail for it with the dog in his arms.

Mrs. Clay was enchanted to be able to oblige her cousin in such a trifle, and would he speak freely when he wanted anything? and then went home and told all her family in confidence that Mr. Bently was a raving maniac.

Reader, according to our promises at the beginning of this history, we should stop here. The scene has changed, the time already exceeds twenty‐ four hours, and only the characters remain the same. But we have not done. There is something more which we are pining to tell. Shall we stop, then, and perish in silence, rather than transgress rules made by a people “dead and done with this many a year,” whose whole country, with themselves on it, could have been thrown into one of our inland seas without making it spill over? No! Perish the unities!

_Scene II._—Large parlor, rosy‐tinted all through with reflections from sunset, from firelight, and from red draperies. After‐dinner silence pervading, open folding‐doors giving a view through a suite of rooms, in the furthest of which an old gentleman sleeps in his arm‐chair. Or, perhaps, it is a picture of a library, with an old gentleman asleep in it. The stillness is perfect enough for that. Mr. Bently, convalescent, first dinner down‐stairs since his illness, stands near a window looking out, but watchful of the inside of the parlor, and of a lady who sits at an embroidery‐frame near the same window. The lady is superficially dignified and tranquil, but there is an unusual color in the cheeks, and a slight unsteadiness in the fingers, which tell her secret conviction that something is going to happen. This is the first time the two have met since Miss Willis found the deserted man lying half senseless on Mrs. Clay’s parlor floor.

He is thinking of that time now, and that an acknowledgment is due, and wondering how it is to be made, half a mind to be angry, rather than grateful, for the service. Such is man. All the bitterness of his lonely life rises up before him. Gray hairs are on his head, lines of age mark his face, but his heart protests against being set aside as too old for anything but dry speculation and love of abstract truth.

“I have been seeking for some proper terms in which to express to you my grateful sense of your humanity in coming to me when I was left sick and alone, but I cannot find them,” he said at length, facing her.

“There is no need to say anything about it,” she replied quietly, setting a careful silken stitch. “I could not have done otherwise.”

Having begun, the gentleman could not stop, or would not.

“I am sure you meant well, but did you do well?” he went on. “Could you not have been content to send the doctor, without coming yourself? Did you reflect that you were apparently incurring peril, and that for a man who had a heart as well as a head, and, worse yet, for a man whose heart had for years striven vainly to forget you? You have deprived me of the shield and support of even attempted indifference. I can no longer try to forget you, or think of you coldly, without the basest ingratitude.”

Will the reader pardon Mr. Bently for expressing himself so grammatically? It was through the force of a long habit, which even passion could not break. It is true that, according to Gerald Griffin, Juno herself, when angry, spoke bad Latin; but then, Juno was a woman.

_Allons, donc._ We are ourselves interested in this conversation, and are pleased to observe that, though the speaker’s moods and tenses are not flagrant, his eyes and cheeks are.

The lady glanced up swiftly with that smile, half shy, half mirthful, with which a woman who knows her power, and means to use it kindly, receives the acknowledgment of it.

“Why should you think coldly of me, or forget me?” she asked.

Mr. Bently met her glance with stern eyes. “Does a man willingly submit to slavery?” he demanded. He had not suspected Marian Willis of coquetry.

She looked down at her work again, the smile fading, but the mouth still sweet, slowly threaded her needle with a rose‐pink floss, and said as slowly, “I do not wish you to forget me.”

One who has seen the sun strike through a heavy fog, stop a moment, then fling it asunder, all in silence, without breath of breeze, but making a bright day of a dark one, knows how Mr. Bently’s clouded face cleared at those words, and the look of her who spoke them.

No more was said then. Enough is as good as a feast, and both tasted in that moment the full sweetness of a happiness the more perfect because apparently incomplete.

On one point our mind is made up—this story shall not end with a marriage. A marriage there was, at seven o’clock one spring morning, in the little suburban church, with only three visible witnesses; and the marriage feast was—be it said with all reverence and adoration—manna from heaven, the Bread of Angels!

Mrs. Clay was, of course, shocked at this affair. Where was the _trousseau_, where the fuss, the presents that might have been, the rehearsal at a fashionable church, the organ music, the crowd of dear criticising friends, the reception, cake and wine, journey, what not—all the parade, weariness, and extravagance which have so often changed a sacrament into a ceremony? Where, indeed? They had no existence outside of the lady’s disappointed wishes.

She did not even see what she called this “positively shabby affair,” and we will not dwell on it. Turn we to the final scene.

Does the reader object that John bears too small a part in the story named for him? On the contrary, the whole story is because of John. You have, perhaps, seen a painting of the procession at the coronation of George IV., pages and pages of magnificent persons, names, and costumes, the brilliant pageant of the long‐extended _queue_, all because of one person in it. The figure is rather large, apparently, for use in this place, but only apparently; for John’s record is better than any king’s, in that it is unstained.

A year has passed. In the midst of a fair area of gardens and trees stands a pleasant house. Only a window or two are open, for the spring is not yet far advanced. Underneath a large old pine, tree not far from the porch, a hole has been dug, and at one side of it stands Mr. Bently, spade in hand, and at the other his wife. This little pit is lined with green boughs, and the lady stoops and carefully and soberly adds one more. On the heap of earth thrown up rests a box.

This much is visible to a young man who comes strolling up the path from the gate. He pauses, and looks on in astonishment. He recollects of having heard somewhere that Cousin Bently’s dog John was accidentally shot, and that Mrs. Bently cried about it. Can it be possible that they are making a funeral over John? That would be too funny.

Mr. Bently stooped, took the box in his arms, and placed it carefully down among the green boughs. Standing upright then, he wiped his eyes, and muttered a trembling, “Poor fellow!”

“Good‐morning!” said a brisk voice at his elbow. “I’m sorry Johnnie met with a mishap. Are you burying him here?”

The vapid, mean, supercilious face gave them both such a shock that they reddened and frowned. No one could have been less welcome at that moment than Arthur Clay.

Mrs. Bently answered his question with a brief, “Yes.”

“Oh! well, there are dogs enough in the world,” said the young man, meaning to be consoling.

“There are puppies enough!” muttered Mr. Bently, and began shovelling the earth savagely into the grave.

“Please go into the house, and wait for us, Arthur,” the lady said, with polite decision. She had no mind to have this last touching rite spoiled by such an intrusion.

But young Mr. Clay was in an obliging mood. “Thank you; I’d just as lief stay, and rather. I never attended a canine funeral before.”

There was a momentary silence, then Mrs. Bently spoke again, with still more decision and far less suavity: “On the whole, you must excuse us from seeing you any longer this morning. If you had gone to the door, the servant would have told you that we do not receive any one to‐day.”

The young man gave an angry laugh. “Oh! certainly! I wouldn’t for the world intrude on your sorrow. Good‐morning! It’s a pity, though, that dogs are not immortal, isn’t it? You might have John canonized.”

Mr. Bently flashed his eyes round at the speaker. “What!” he thundered, “_you_ immortal, and _my_ DOG NOT!”

If they had been two Parrott guns, instead of two eyes and a mouth, Mr. Arthur Clay could not have retreated more precipitantly.

The grave was filled in and covered over with boughs, two sighs were breathed over it, then the couple walked, arm in arm, slowly toward the house.

“He was a perfect creature!” Mr. Bently said, after a silence.

“Yes!” assented the wife. “Only he would bounce at one so.”

“Marian,” said her husband solemnly, “if it hadn’t been for John’s habit of bouncing at his friends, you would have had no husband.”

It was well meant, but unfortunately worded. The lady pouted, being by no means an ideal, perfect, pattern woman, but only a natural and charming one, with varying moods and whims playing, spraylike, over the deeps of principle and religion. “Don’t be too sure of that!” she made answer to him.

Mr. Bently never bristled with virtues when his wife made such remarks. He smiled now, full of kindness. “I meant to say that I should have had no wife,” he corrected himself.

At that, the pout, which was only a rebellious muscle, not a rebellious heart, disappeared. “It means the same thing, you most patient of men!” exclaimed his wife fervently.

They reached the porch, and stood there a moment, looking back to the mound under the pine‐tree.

“It is a comfort to think,” said the wife, “that for one year of his life we made him such a happy dog.”

Then they went in, and the door closed behind them.

The International Congress Of Prehistoric Anthropology And Archaeology.

From La Revue Generale De Bruxelles.

The International Congress of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archæology held its sixth meeting at Brussels, in 1872. The idea of this congress originated in Italy. Some eminent Swiss, Italian, and French naturalists, assembled at Spezzia in 1865, resolved to hold the first session the following year at Neufchâtel. This meeting, entirely confined to explorations, created no sensation out of the scientific world, but it was agreed there should be another at the time of the International Exposition at Paris in 1867. The congress, thenceforth established, appointed a committee to organize the next meeting. More than four hundred savants responded to the invitation. At Paris it was decided to meet again the next year at Norwich, at the same time as the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The programme of questions proposed for discussion at Norwich presents a striking similarity to that at Paris. The congress held at Copenhagen in 1869 was distinguished by a more local and practical character than the preceding. Finally, the Congress of Bologna, in 1871, enlarged still more the extent of its programme; according, however, the first place to objects that particularly interested Italy.

The programme of the Congress of Brussels was, so to speak, determined by M. E. Dupont’s important discoveries in the caverns of the province of Namur, and the questions were drawn up from the Belgian point of view, in order to give our savants an opportunity of acquainting foreign scientific men with the researches and facts relating particularly to our country. Similar proceedings had taken place at Copenhagen and Bologna. But the programme of Brussels by no means excluded points of general interest. Here is the list of those proposed:

I. What discoveries have been made in Belgium to attest the antiquity of prehistoric man?

II. What were the manners and pursuits of the people who lived in the caverns of Belgium? Did their manners and pursuits vary during the quaternary epoch? What analogy is there between their manners and pursuits, and those of the troglodyte population in other parts of Western Europe and of the savages of the present day?

III. What were the pursuits of the people who inhabited the plains of Hainault during the quaternary epoch? Can it be proved they held any communication with their contemporaries of the caverns of the provinces of Liége and Namur, or with the quaternary peoples of the valleys of the Somme and the Thames?

IV. What characterized the age of polished stone in Belgium? What was its connection with previous ages, and with the age of polished stone in Western Europe?

V. What were the anatomical and ethnical characteristics of man in Belgium during the age of stone?

VI. What characterized the age of bronze in Belgium?

VII. What characterized the appearance of iron in Belgium?

Excursions to the caverns of the valleys of the Lesse, the flint‐works of Spiennes and Mesvin, and the entrenched camp of Hastedon near Namur, formed a practical demonstration of the problems discussed at the meeting.

Many illustrious co‐workers responded to the invitation of the Committee of Arrangements. England was represented by Messrs. Prestwich, Owen, the great palæontologist, Dawkins, Lubbock, Franks, the Director of the Department of Antiquities and Ethnography at the British Museum, etc.; France, by her most eminent anthropologists, archæologists, and geologists, Messrs, Quatrefages, Broca, Belgrand, Hébert, De Mortillet and Bertrand of the Musée de S. Germain, General Faid’herbe, the Marquis de Vibraye, Cartaillac, De Linas, Doctors Lagneau et Hamy, one President and the other Secretary of the Society of Anthropology, Deshayes, Gaudry, Gervais, the Abbés Bourgeois and Delauny, one Superior and the other Professor at the College of Pont‐Levoy, Oppert, the celebrated explorer of Khorsabat, and many others, among whom we must not omit the inevitable Mlle. Clemence Royer, at least as a curiosity. The northern countries sent the founders of prehistoric archæology in the North—Messrs. Worsaœ, Engelhardt, De Wichfeld, Steenstrup, Waldemar‐Schmidt, from Denmark; Messrs. Hildebrand, Landberg, Lagerberg, Nillson, D’Oliviecrona, from Sweden; Italy was brilliantly represented by Messrs. Capellini, Fabretti, Biondelli, Count Conestabile, Gozzadini, etc.; Spain and Portugal by only a few; Holland by several, among whom was M. Leemans, Director of the Museum of Leyden; Austria by Count Wurmbrand; Germany by the Baron de Ducker, Professors Fraas, of Stuttgart, Schafthausen, of Bonn, the celebrated Virchow, of Berlin, Lindenschmidt, of Mayence; Switzerland by Desor, one of the founders of prehistoric archæology. Belgian science was represented in the committee by Messrs. d’Omalius d’Halloy, the venerable President of the congress, Van Beneden, De Witte, Dupont, with the élite of our savants, attended by a constellation of archæologists _de circonstance_ belonging to the various orders of the literary, artistic, and political world, and even the commercial; for philosophy does not daunt M. Jourdain in these days. As for the rest, it was a spectacle of no slight interest to behold the extraordinary concourse of hearers that thronged the sessions at the ducal palace, attentively listening to discussions sometimes very abstract, and again participating in the excursions of the learned assembly with a genuine interest apart from the mere pleasure of the excursions themselves. In proportion as man adds to his knowledge of the globe he inhabits, instead of being satisfied, the greater ardor and interest he manifests to know more. “The surface of both land and water explored in every sense of the word; mountains measured; oceans sounded, and their secrets brought to light; inorganic substances and organized bodies analyzed and described; plants, animals, and the human races studied under every aspect; historical traditions investigated and revised; the dead languages brought into use, and the words derived from them traced back to their original roots—all this is not enough. Knowing what he is, and with a thousand theories as to his destination, man wishes to pierce the mystery of his origin; he asks whence he came, and how he began the career so laboriously pursued, and into which he was thrust by a destiny of which he had no consciousness.”(219) The truths that we grasp in our day were perhaps only guessed at by the ancients. Lucretius has drawn a very correct picture, for those days, of the wretched condition of the earlier races, their struggles with the elements, and even the primitive weapons of stone which they wrought before the age of bronze and iron. But this is only a poetical conception to which must be attached no more importance than it merits. The science of prehistoric ages then had no existence. This science, scarcely known twenty years ago, has now quite a literature of its own, several reviews, and an annual International Congress (in future it will be biennial), splendid museums in all our capitals, and a society whose labors have contributed not a little to so prodigious a result—the Society of Anthropology.

Some persons are troubled at the discussion of grave and delicate questions that seem to set revelation and science at variance. As for us, who can never admit the possibility of a conflict between the Bible and nature—those two divine revelations—or that they ought ever to be completely separated, we deeply regret the complete absence of our clergy at these great sessions, while those of France and Italy were represented in a brilliant manner.

“I am well aware,” says M. Chabas, in an able preface, “that the materialistic tendency of savants of very considerable attainments in anthropology and other branches of prehistoric research, withholds many men whose concurrence would be of value to science from entering the arena where such points are discussed.” But timid minds are becoming more reassured. Therefore, as the Abbé Bourgeois happily remarked at the Congress of Paris, “We shall perhaps have to add to the antiquity of man, but we ought also to detract from that of fossils.” Besides, hitherto, in spite of so much research, man alone has been found intelligent and with a moral sense of his acts; and in the animal kingdom there is not a single proof to confirm even remotely Lamarck’s theory of transmutation revived by Darwin. When so many are appealing to science to the exclusion of God from the universe, it would be well for others to endeavor to make him manifest by the aid of science.

“What!” exclaims Mgr. Meignan, in his brilliant work on _The World and Primitive Man according to the Bible_, “ought the exegete to make no account of the progress of human knowledge? Can the savant find neither profit nor light in the wisdom of Holy Writ? We think otherwise. The theologian who first studies nature will be better enabled to explain certain passages of the Bible; and the naturalist and archæologist, in their turn, will find it advantageous to study the real meaning of Genesis.” The human mind enters upon a course of examination more or less legitimate in subjecting religion itself to the trial of controversy; it is almost a duty imposed on the conscience of all who are not vainly endowed with reason to enable themselves to give a reason for the belief that is within them. “The task of the apologist,” says the eminent prelate just quoted, “is never at an end in our restless age.” The disagreement that some seem to apprehend only exists in superficial or sceptical minds.

If the Bible is not a scientific revelation, neither does it contradict science, and especially in the bold outlines drawn by Moses. Science, as it progresses, sets up its landmarks, so to speak, beside the immutable bounds of faith; it is so with the laws of light, as well as the fundamental principles of geology. Revelation assigns no limits to the antiquity of the world, and allows _the beginning_ in which God created it to recede to as remote a period as is wished, and geology corroborates the Scripture account of successive creations. Is not the unity of origin of the human species, distinctly declared in both Testaments, connected with all the hypotheses that have excited so much opposition in our day? I do not mean the unity of the human species, a doctrinal question very different from the other, and not necessarily connected with it. But the unity of origin of the human race is now taught and demonstrated by the greater part of those versed in natural history; it is a scientific truth. As to the existence of man in the tertiary epoch, it is far from certain, though sustained by many highly respectable men.(220) M. Evans, the Secretary of the Geological Society of London, whose name is an authority on things pertaining to anthropology and palæontology, expressed himself in these terms at a meeting of the British Association at Liverpool last year [1871]: “We cannot,” said he, “possibly make any prediction as to the discoveries that still await us in the soil beneath our feet; but we certainly have no reason to conclude that the most ancient traces of man on the earth, or even on the soil of Western Europe, have been brought to light. At the same time, I must confess that the existing evidence of man in the miocene period, and even in the pliocene, in France (it will be seen further on that this has since been asserted in Portugal), appears to me, after the most careful examination on the spot, very far from convincing.”

Besides, the word _prehistoric_ has only a relative exactness of meaning. In Belgium, prehistoric man comes down to the century before the Roman Conquest. A vast number of the monuments and remains so discussed in our day might be included in the historic period. In most cases, too absolute a signification is given to the word prehistoric, conveying an idea of remote antiquity far beyond the bounds of chronology. It is under the influence of this preconceived opinion that the most distinguished and independent investigators have allowed themselves to be carried away with the apparent revelation of an entirely new world. In hearing of the millions of ages attributed to quaternary man, one feels greatly behind the times, and asks himself anxiously if there really is a science that has a good right to make man so old, and that affords means of ascertaining, as has been stated, what our ancestors were observing in the heavens on the 29th of January, 11,542 years before Christ. This feeling of astonishment must be still livelier in those for whom the insoluble problems of antiquity extend back to less than two thousand years. We do not know the site of _Alesia_, and we pretend to know the habitat and manners of villages of more than three hundred thousand years before the downfall of the Gallic nationality! It should be confessed that the science which has so recently sprung up, and which has for its object the study of human labor anterior to the use of metals, is neither so firmly established nor so positive in its deductions that we should blindly accept such bold theories. This is one of the reasons that should encourage more men of serious pursuits to take a part in these debates, as to which it is allowable to hope that the truth will some day be discovered at an equal distance from any exaggeration.

We shall have occasion to return to these questions which occupied the Congress of Brussels. This preamble appeared necessary as a justification for confining ourselves to a plain, simple analysis of the proceedings of the congress—others can review them better than we.

We will only add one word more. The field for discussion had been prepared in a wonderful manner by the recent publication of the excellent work in which the learned and active director of our Royal Museum of Natural History has condensed his researches.(221)

The opening session took place the 22d of August. The day was spent in receptions, speeches of welcome, replies, the installation of the board, and other official courtesies which we spare the reader. The following days there were two sessions a day. The morning of the 23d of August was devoted to the first question in the programme. There was no one better fitted to develop it than M. Dupont, the Chief Secretary of the congress, and the most active of its organizers. He had already given a clear outline of its history in his discourse at the first session of the day before. It was started in Belgium in 1829, and kept up by the researches of Schmerling, who may be regarded as the Champollion of prehistoric anthropology; but our illustrious fellow‐citizen was not encouraged in his discoveries, and it may be said that he was, to a certain degree, a martyr to the scientific prejudices of his time. His labors, occurring at a time when Cuvier’s authority was at its height, could not counterbalance the influence of that great genius, who declared that man could not be found among fossils’ bones, and that the vestiges of the human race in the caverns came under the general rule. No one then could have dreamed of referring these remains to the epoch of the mammoth, and it was scarcely admitted, till within a dozen years, that man was contemporary with the animals of the geological periods which preceded ours. Schmerling, but little befriended by circumstances, was deceived as to what caused the introduction of this _débris_ into the caverns. He attributed it to sudden inundations. Some years later, Mr. Spring opened the way to the true theory, which allows the reconstruction of the ethnography of geological epochs; but he could not continue his researches, and it was not till 1861 that Lartet’s report concerning the caverns of Aurillac at length established a collection of decisive facts. In 1863, M. Dupont was appointed to explore the caverns of the province of Namur, which gave promise of discoveries of unusual interest; it was important that our country, after having taken so large a part in establishing the first principles of this new science, should not remain inactive in the movement to which it had led. The immense result of researches continued without relaxation for seven years, summer and winter, and the valuable remains thus found, which are the ornament of our principal museum, prove that the direction of the task could not have been confided to better hands.

M. Dupont, laying aside the arbitrary classifications that had hitherto been adopted for determining the antiquity of remains found in caverns, introduced the geologic method in his researches, which is founded upon principles almost incontestable and evidences of indubitable truth. The chronological data furnished by this method are generally of mathematical exactitude. “With this point to start from,” says M. Dupont, “I was sure of clearly determining the fauna and ethnographical remains of each epoch to which the objects discovered in the various subterranean explorations belonged.”(222) In pursuing the application of this method, our young and already illustrious savant was enabled to show the evolution of physical and biological phenomena, and to reconstruct the ethnography of the age of stone. Whatever may be thought of the reality of the facts brought forward, it must be confessed that no ordinary mind could have formed such bold conceptions.

After a communication from Dr. Hamy on the flint‐works of France and England at the time of the mammoth, the Abbé Bourgeois discussed the question of tertiary man. The learned professor’s clear, fluent language, the distinction of his manners, and his open, animated countenance so completely won the goodwill of the audience that thenceforth, whenever he spoke, his appearance in the tribune was hailed with unanimous applause.

The Abbé Bourgeois and M. de Launay, his colleague, are the true heralds of tertiary man. The chronological discussion they so boldly excite seems to embarrass them but little; on the other hand, they almost banish the hope some still seem to cling to of finding the man‐monkey. In 1866, M. Bourgeois described and presented to the Academy of Sciences some wrought flints found in the tertiary deposits in the commune of Thenay near Pont‐ Levoy (Loir‐et‐Cher). M. Desnoyers had already, in 1863, pointed out bones found in strata incontestably pliocene, on which were striæ, or very distinct and regularly marked incisions. Worked flints are beginning to be found, we are assured, in the bottom of the calcareous deposits of Beauce; that is to say, in chalk. They are identical in form with those found on the surface; as in other places, there are utensils for cutting, piercing, scraping, and hammering. Many of these instruments have been injured by the action of fire. Finally, says the Abbé Bourgeois, “I find in them almost every proof of man’s agency, to wit: after‐touches, symmetrical grooves, grooves artificially made to correspond with natural ones, and especially the multiplied reproduction of certain forms. This is a peculiar, unheard‐of fact of the highest importance, but, to me, an indubitable one.” M. Bourgeois exhibited to the competent judges assembled at Brussels what he considered the proofs of the authenticity of his discovery. To him they are convincing, but what he seeks, above all, is truth, and he asked that a special committee be appointed to elucidate the question. This committee pronounced a verdict two days after, without deciding the point. Of thirty‐two specimens presented for examination, some appeared to them evidently wrought, but most of them were unanimously rejected. There was no difference of opinion as to M. Bourgeois’ sincerity of belief, but they were divided as to the authenticity of the deposit. Those who have seen the place had no doubts; the remainder were incredulous. M. Capellini proposed that a new committee be appointed to make researches on the spot. The general conclusion was that no solution is at present possible.

The existence of prehistoric man in Greece next became the subject of lively discussion, giving rise to the most contradictory opinions. The conclusion was that there are no decided proofs. The same doubt was manifested with respect to a skull from California, said to have been found in tertiary formation. It is not even certain it is a human skull.

The second session of the day opened with an account from M. Rivière of the discovery of a complete skeleton in a grotto at Menton, found among the remains of various animals of the quaternary epoch, such as the lion, bear, rhinoceros, etc. Then M. de Mortillet gave a detailed description of the fauna, and the utensils, arms, pursuits, manners, and even the first manifestation of art, of man in the quaternary period, and he proposed a still further subdivision of the classes than is now admitted. The speaker mentioned a very singular circumstance calculated to excite reflection—an inexplicable hiatus between the last period of the age of cut stone and the age of polished stone, in which new races appeared of greater industry and more intelligence, agriculture was developed, the industrial pursuits were extended, and art disappeared. It is the era of lacustrine villages and of dolmens. M. de Mortillet’s sketch of prehistoric civilization was picturesque but far from convincing.

The Abbé Bourgeois did not think M. de Mortillet’s classification correct, because the progress of civilization in France and Belgium was unequal. “The Belgians,” he said, “were more advanced.” And the orator added with charming bonhomie: “I cannot say it is otherwise now.”

M. Fraas, professor at Stuttgart, stated that he had made some explorations in the grotto of Hollenfelz near Ulm, in Würtemberg. The _Homo unius cavernæ_ was refuted in his conclusions by M. Hébert, the celebrated professor at the Sorbonne, and by other savants. M. d’Omalius was of the opinion that two geologists of different countries, desirous of identifying beds contiguous to their fields of exploration, were never able to agree. Between two strata there are always deposits that partake of the distinctive characteristics of both.

We pass from the grave to the entertaining. The following day, at seven o’clock in the morning, all the learned assembly, glad, it may be imagined, to get away from the pretentious paintings of the ducal palace, took flight by steam for the valley of the Lesse. We would be the first to confess that, if the country excited the sincere admiration of the excursionists, the latter were equally a delightful source of curiosity to the native inhabitants. They will not readily forget the picturesque sight of our long caravan traversing the good town of Dinant all decked out with flags, parading in elegant equipages lost among the _coucous_, _fiacres_, and _calèches_ of wondrous construction, or perched on the imperials of the most extraordinary vehicles, omnibuses, and _pataches_ truly prehistoric, filing along the banks of the Meuse towards the valleys amid laughter, jests, joltings, and the vociferations of our _Automedon_. Charming landscapes, but detestable roads. This region has been so often described that I need not attempt to depict it; it is with the pencil and brush it should be undertaken. Sometimes the road winds around with disagreeable undulations through the deep ravines bordered by apple‐trees whose fruit‐laden branches sweep the imperials of the carriages, endangering the silken hat; sometimes rolling over broad grassy roads walled in by immense cliffs crowned with ruins and verdure, or affording vistas through the neighboring valleys, lit up by the sun streaming through the woods with a mild radiance that recalls the Elysian Fields of mythological memory. At length we come to the Lesse, which bars the way with its clear, rapid current. The carriages have to ford the capricious and petulant waters of the little winding torrent. The horses sheer in the very middle of the stream, causing a deafening noise of laughter, shouts of alarm, and blows of the whip. All ends by crossing without any great difficulty, but the same scene is reproduced five or six times with varied incidents; for there are that number of fords to cross. It was in one of these places, where we were obliged to cross the river in boats in order to reach the grottoes, that we saw the overloaded skiff capsized that bore among others M. d’Omalius and Mlle. Royer. The apostle of woman’s emancipation clung with shrill screams to the neck of a small gentleman, her _chevalier servant_ for the time, and, when she found a footing with the water up to her chin, she contributed somewhat to save her assistant by keeping his head out of water—a fine opportunity for quoting La Fontaine, with a kind variation: “That is nothing; it is not a woman that is drowning.” The nonagenarian president of the congress was taken out safe and sound, and it was with extreme difficulty he was induced to change his _chaussures_, but nothing could prevail upon him to accept dry garments. Happily, the weather was superb, and the shipwrecked travellers could get dry in the sun.

We returned by way of the plateaux that overlook the valley. Nothing could be imagined more fantastically beautiful than that immense panorama bathed in the purple light of the setting sun. The visitors, under the guidance of M. Dupont, had been through all the principal caverns described in his book. His learned explanations were greatly relished, and added a keen interest to an excursion of which the unexpected and the amusing had heightened the charm. We will not speak of the banquet that crowned so delightful a day, or of the ovations that were lavished on the savants and others. For such details, we refer you to the newspapers that published the reports.

To Be Concluded In Our Next Number.

The See Of Peter.