Chapter XXIII: Victor’s Death.—plots Against Louis (2)

We believe in one only God, the supreme and sovereign Workman, whom we do not confound with his work; the work is divine, but it is not God. Beyond the world, above the world, in an inaccessible region, lives and reigns from everlasting to everlasting the majesty of God, the Infinite and Absolute, the Justice and Mercy, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, living and personal, the eternal Providence, who watches over the workmen of all races and of all times. There are among you some who refuse to this God the free adhesion of their faith, and it is this negation which we come here to combat with the arms of reason and of light. All depends upon your faith; even though you may be atheists, we will love you, but, alas! you will not return our love, and the reconciliation so ardently desired will not be easily realized; for you can only be dissolved in love, and God is love.

We believe, then, in God the Creator, and we bow before him with the simple and magnificent faith of the humble stone-cutter of whom Lamartine speaks, and who one day said to our great poet, “I do not know how other men are made; but, as for me, I cannot see, I do not say a star, but even an ant, the leaf of a tree, a grain of sand, without asking who made it; and the reply is, God. I understand it well, for, before being, it was not; therefore, it could not make itself.” I quote these beautiful words with great joy under the roof of a chapel especially consecrated to workmen. Meditate upon them, workmen, who listen to me; and, if you are republicans, respect, love, believe in what this republican of 1848 respected, loved, and believed. Then the workman believed in God; this time must return, and for this necessary work we will expend our time, our strength, our life. But it is not enough to believe in God; we must render to the Creator the act of the creature, and offer him respect, homage, confidence, prayer, and love. Blessed be this little chapel of _Jésus-Ouvrier_, if this night one of these sentiments will be offered by one of the souls who are here and listen to me.

We also believe in the Son of God, the Word, the interior Speech, the creative Word of the Father, and we affirm that this Word, at a determined moment of history, came down on our earth that sin had stained, and that had to be purified. To arrive at God, who is absolute purity, we must be white or whitened. Are we white of ourselves? Look into your souls, and answer. Christ, then, came to suffer, to expiate, to die for us all, and especially for all workmen, past, present, and to come. Such is the admirable doctrine of the solidarity of expiation; and it is here that Jesus is again the type of workmen. Oh! who can complain of work, when God for thirty years submitted to the rigorous law of manual labor! Who can complain of suffering, when he bore the weight of all the sufferings of the body and of the human soul! Who can complain of loneliness and abandonment, when this God was betrayed by his tenderest friends, and abandoned by all except his mother, who remained standing at the foot of the cross! Who can complain of dying in solitude, in grief, and in shame, on the pallet of a garret or the bed of a hospital, when he, the Creator of so many millions of suns and of the universe, gave us the example of the most cruel death, after having offered us as model the most wretched life! Ah! they had reason to decree the suppression of the crucifix in the hospitals and schools; for a true workman cannot look at the crucifix without being moved to the bottom of his soul, without extending to it his arms, without being profoundly consoled, without crying, “Behold my Master, my Example, and my Father!”

We believe that Christianity is contained in these words, which we should ponder: “Imitation of Christ,” and, in particular, “Imitation of Jesus the workman.” It is by that means we will be led to give a place to private virtues, which our adversaries do not wish to accord to us. Nowadays it is fashionable among workmen and others to repeat this ill-sounding proposition, which is an exact summary of Victor Hugo’s last work: that “Society is bad, and man is good.” Do not believe it; man is an intelligent, free, responsible being, who can, when he wishes, and with the aid of God, conquer the evil in him, and do good. As society is only a composition of men, it follows and will ever be that, if each one of us becomes purer, more humble, more charitable, better, society will itself become less savage, more enlightened, better organized, every way improved. In political economy, we cannot too highly exalt the _rôle_ of private virtues.

It can be demonstrated mathematically, and it will soon be shown, that everything socially springs from sacrifice. If you wish to know here what distinguishes the Catholics from their enemies, I will tell you very simply that they place duty before right, and that the enemies of the church place right before duty. Certainly, we believe in right as strongly as you can; but we make it the logical consequence and, if I may say so, the reward of accomplished duty. Weigh well this doctrine, to which is attached the destiny of the world.

Finally, we believe in the life everlasting. Doubtless it is to be desired that all men should make every effort for the reign of justice on this earth; in this, the Catholics have not been wanting, nor ever will be. But whatever may be the legitimate beauty of these attempts, I think that the perfection of ideal justice will only be found in the future life, and that, to make the definitive balance of the fate of each man, heaven must always enter in the calculation. Here below there are too many inconsolable sorrows, more suffering than social equality can ever suppress. Alas! there will always be the passions that ravage the heart; always ingratitude and abandonment; always sickness and the death of those whom we love best. Paradise of my God! you will re-establish the equilibrium; paradise of my God! if you are, above all, destined for those who have suffered, you will be assuredly opened to workmen. In this hope I live.

And here I am led to recapitulate, not without emotion, all the benefits that Providence has more especially reserved for you. “A heavenly Father, who merits above all the title of workman, and who made the earth; a God, who comes on earth to take up the plane, the saw, and the hammer, and become the prototype of workmen; an infallible church that for eighteen hundred years has bent over workmen, to enlighten, console, and love them; an eternity of happiness, where all present injustice will be superabundantly repaired.”

Workmen, my brethren, what can you ask further? In the place of God, what could you make better? Answer.

II.

What do we wish, however? In other words, what can we promise you?

First of all, there are twenty promises we cannot make you, and it is our duty here to warn you of our _non possumus_.

We cannot promise you ever to consider armed revolt as a duty or a right. We cling with all the strength of our understanding to the doctrine that even against injustice the protest should be martyrdom, heroically accepted, heroically submitted. Thus did the first Christians; they allowed themselves to be slaughtered like beautiful sheep, covered with generous blood. This sublimely passive resistance will not take from us, as it never did from them, the liberty of speech; they died declaring their belief in God, the supreme Principle, and in the Son of God, the sovereign Expiator. And when fifteen or eighteen millions had been killed, the church triumphed; she then came forth from the catacombs, and to her was given the mission to enlighten the world.

We do not promise you the liberty of doing evil, and it would be false if we even appeared to make such an engagement. At this instant, there are five hundred men in France who pervert, corrupt, putrefy France; among these are four hundred and ninety writers and ten caricaturists; according to our idea, it is deplorable that they can freely exercise their trade, and destroy with impunity so many millions of souls among young girls, young men, and workmen.

We cannot with sincerity promise you absolute equality on this earth. What we can promise you hereafter is that beautiful equality of Christians who are sprung from the same God-Creator, saved by the same God-Redeemer, enlightened by the same God-Illuminator. It is the equality, the profound equality, of baptism and the eucharist; the equality of souls in trials and reward; it is, in fine, equality in heaven. As for the other, we will exhaust ourselves in the effort to obtain it; but we have two obstacles before us, over which we do not hope to triumph—sickness and vice. No equality is possible with these two scourges, and they are ineradicable. We cannot promise you either illegitimate pleasure or even the end of suffering. In taking suffering from man—which is impossible—they would take from him his resemblance to God, and consequently his true greatness and his titles to heaven. The more we suffer, the more we resemble our Father, the more we merit eternal joy. In suffering will be found the Christian principle, which we cannot efface from the Gospel, and which is even the essence of the Christian life. But we promise to suffer with you, and, as the church has done for eighteen hundred years, to alleviate your sorrows, to heal your wounds, to satisfy your material and moral hunger, and to quench your thirst for truth. The fathers of the church invite us only to consider ourselves as “depositaries of riches.” All property is but a deposit in our hands—a deposit which we are strictly obliged to communicate to you, and for which we must render an account to the Master.

We promise you also faith, which gives to the soul a noble attribute and a happy tranquillity. And with faith we can give you what has been well called the _intelligence of life_—the intelligence thanks to which the workman knows how to accept inequality, because he sees in the horizon the beautiful perspective of eternity. We promise you calmness in certainty, the consolation that every workman can feel in regarding his divine type; and, in giving you this type, you will possess a rare treasure, for which your souls are justly eager.

We promise you the sweetness of work Christianly accepted. Says a great Christian: “What matters work when Jesus Christ is there?” It is here that we must recall those splendid verses of the greatest of our poets—those verses which we would wish to see written on the walls of all our transfigured workshops: “God, look you—let the senseless reject—causes to be born of labor two daughters: Virtue which makes cheerfulness sweet, and Cheerfulness which makes virtue charming.” And with work, you will conquer also the “courage of life”; for you will be convinced that all beings are subjected to this great law, and that the blows of your hammers are the notes of a universal chant. “All work, each one is at his post; he who governs the state; the savant, who extends the limits of human explorations; the sculptor, who makes the statue spring from his chisel; the poet, who sings between his tears and his sighs; the priest, who punishes and pardons—all, down to you, poor workman, in your smoky workshop. We are all living stones of that cathedral formed of souls and of centuries for the glory of God.”[200] With such thoughts, the day appears short, and labor assumes an exquisite character. What joy to say, “I work with the entire universe; I work as God himself has set me the example.”

Still further, we promise you honor and pride. The Christian workman, he whom we hope to see multiplied in Paris, loves his trade; he is proud of it, and would blush if he did not prefer it to all others. He contemplates with satisfaction the work which he has just accomplished, and, like the Creator, with innocent simplicity, finds it beautiful. He attempts without jealousy to equal and even surpass the best workmen of his kind. He thinks that his country should be the most honorable and the most honored of all, and that France should be the equal of all other powers. On this subject he will not jest, but becomes grave. If he belongs to a corporation, he is enthusiastic for the glory of his banner, and will not allow it to be insulted. When a man thus respects his position, he respects himself, and is led to respect God. Such are the elements of what I willingly term the workman’s honor.

We promise you peace of conscience, the happiness that follows accomplished duty, the repose in joy. Every workman among us should say to his children what one of the most learned men of the day, the illustrious Emmanuel de Rougé, wrote in his will: “May my children preserve the faith. Repose of mind and heart can only be found in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and the Saviour of man.” To work, says a contemporary philosopher, is easy; to repose is difficult. Man works without repose when he labors relying only upon himself; he works and reposes when he commences by first confiding himself to God. This is the repose we offer you; it is supremely delicious, and the workman will be led to repose, in working for others, like good Claude des Huttes, the stone-cutter of St. Point, the friend of Lamartine, who, poor as he was, worked gratuitously for those poorer than he, and said to himself, when retiring to rest: “I have earned a good day’s wages; for the poor pay me in friendship, my heart pays me in contentment, and the good God will pay me in mercy.” O greatness of the Christian workman!

We promise to labor as unceasingly for the amelioration of your material condition as for the enlargement of your understanding. Evil be to us if we did not think of the lodging, warming, nourishment of the workman’s family; if we would confiscate science to our profit, and not extend to you the treasure; if we ceased for a single instant to open schools, asylums, circles, conferences, institutions of peace and of light. We do not recoil before progress; no light terrifies us. From texts of the Gospel, we have and ever will produce new consequences, religious, philosophical, and social; and these conclusions constitute a progress incessant and ever new—our progress, the only true progress.

Finally, we promise to organize with your aid the workingmen’s associations. Association only frightens us when it leans towards despotism, and we wish principally to give it a religious character. The confraternity! an old word, which is ridiculed, but which in reality is a great thing; men reunited for one temporal aim under the protection of God, their angel guardians, and their celestial patrons; free men, discussing with all loyalty the interests of their trade, and knowing how to govern themselves. You will invent nothing better, provided always that, in this enlarged institution, the Catholic spirit is harmoniously mingled with the positive rules of social science. We are in the midst of a crisis which cannot last long; to our mutual aid and co-operative societies others will succeed more scientifically organized, and, above all, more Christian. We hope in this future, and believe it very near; it is the ideal for this world now, and for heaven hereafter—heaven, which is the great association of the happy ...

III.

It would seem impossible, in the face of such doctrines, that any misunderstanding could exist between the church and the workman; but Satan has not understood it in this manner, and objections pour against the church.

It has been said repeatedly that the church has done nothing for the workman. It is the conclusion that Victor Hugo has given to his _Les Misérables_, and this book has singularly contributed to develop hatred in the hearts of the people. Numerous writers, animated with the same ardent hate, affirm daily that, to find society well organized, we must go back to antiquity, or take 1789 as the place of departure.

To refute these assertions, we will first say that, in regard to antiquity, they forget that it was devoured by the frightful cancer of slavery; among the greater part of nations before Christ, the workmen were for a long time principally slaves. Manual labor, which was universally despised, was performed by entire nations of slaves, who were paid with lashes of the whip. Thus were built many of the magnificent monuments of the Greeks, and, above all, of the Romans—monuments which they place so far above those of the present. I remember, one beautiful October night in the Eternal City, contemplating with stupefaction the immense mass of the Coliseum; the gigantic shafts of the columns which lay pell-mell at my feet; the colossal aqueducts defined against the horizon—all the splendors which are still grand even in their ruins. A priest who accompanied me exclaimed, in astonished admiration, “You must acknowledge that the Christian races have never produced such great works.”

“‘Tis true,” I replied, “and I thank God for it; for these monuments you behold were chiefly constructed by the hands of slaves, and we now only employ free workmen, whom we pay for their labor.”

We do not sufficiently reflect on this. Obelisks, immense pyramids, splendid porticos, hippodromes where so much plebeian blood flowed; theatres where modesty was brutally violated; temples where they adored so many passions, so many vices; tombs where so much vanity is revealed; elegant houses, but where the wife and child were so little valued; astonishing monuments of incomparable art, I admire you much less since I know by whose hands you were raised. It is not thus that they have built since the advent of Jesus Christ and the church.

There is in history a proposition of more than mathematical clearness, which I declare solemnly to be true; it is that _the church destroyed slavery_. It is the church that gradually transformed the slave into the serf; that by degrees compelled society, formed by her, to change the serf into the freeman. This is established by the records, century after century, year after year, day after day. It is true, the church did not improvise in an hour this admirable change, this marvellous progress; it is not her custom to improvise, and, truth to say, she improvises nothing; she moves slowly but surely. She never roused the slaves to revolt, but she recalled the masters to their duty. She gave great care to the question of marriage between slaves; for, with intelligent foresight, she knew that the whole future depended on it: briefly, in 300, there were millions of slaves—in 1000, not one.

Everywhere existed admirable confraternities of workmen, who worked without pay on the numerous cathedrals scattered throughout Europe; thousands of men labored gratuitously for God, or nobly earned their living in working for their brothers. Will you deny this fact? I defy you to do it. The church conquered for the workmen two inappreciable things—liberty and dignity; and, for so many benefits, she too often receives but ingratitude and forgetfulness. One day, while rambling through the wide streets of Oxford, that city of twenty-four colleges, formerly founded by the church, and which live to-day on those foundations of our fathers, I inquired if there could be found a Catholic Church. I was conducted into a kind of room, narrow and low, which many of your employers would not use for a factory or shop. That was what they condescended to lease the holy church of God in the splendid city, built with her hands, and bathed in her sweat. It is thus with the working-class, which is also a creation of the church; its mother is forgotten, and it is with difficulty that she is left a little corner in the workshop; but it is there we will endeavor to replace her with honor, and then each one of you can say with the poet Jasmin: “I remember that, when I was young, the church found me naked, and clothed me; now that I am a man, I find her naked, in my turn I will cover her.” It is this cry we wish to hear from you.

Again, we hear that “the church is not the same to the rich and to the poor.” When will it be proved, when can it be shown, that there are two Creeds, two Decalogues, two codes of morality, two families of sacraments, two dogmas, two disciplines, two altars—one for the use of the great ones of the earth, the other destined for the poor? It can never be done. They can bring forward a certain number of facts; they can cite abuses more or less deplorable, and which we condemn implacably; but the equality remains entire. I go further, and affirm that the church has unceasingly favored the humble, the weak, and the laborers. They are her privileged ones, and she has well shown it.

Another objection current among the working-class, another calumny which has triumphed over the minds of the people, unworthily deceived, is the scandalous assertion that “the church is the enemy of instruction,” and this abominable falsehood is, above all, applied to primary instruction. Now, it is mathematically proved that, before the establishment of the church, there did not exist in the much-lauded antiquity a single school for workmen. This first proposition is clearly evident, and it is not less mathematically demonstrated that, since the advent of the church, “free schools have been attached to each parish, and confided to the direction of the clergy.” Such are the words of a learned man of our day, who has best appreciated this question, and who, in order to establish his conclusion, appeals to texts the most luminously authentic.[201] We will not pause here to speak of the profound love of Christ for the ignorant—that love which shines forth in every page of the Gospel; nor will we linger over the epoch of the persecution of the early church; but we will transport ourselves to France in the first period of our history.

At the commencement of the VIth century, the Council of Vaison declares that for a _long time_ in Italy “the priests had brought up young students in their own houses, and instructed them like good fathers in faith and sound knowledge.” In the year 700, a Council of Rouen goes further, and commands _all Christians_ to send their children to the city school: is not that instruction Christianly free and Christianly obligatory? Meanwhile, Charlemagne appears, and watches energetically that these noble lights shall not be extinguished, or that they may be relighted. In 797, a capitulary of Theodulph offers these admirable words: “That the priests should establish schools in the villages and boroughs, and that no pay should be exacted from the children in return.” The same decrees are found in the canons of the Council of Rome in 826, in the bulls of Pope Leo IV., and in the capitulary of Hérard, Archbishop of Tours, in 858.

Observe that these last quotations belong to the darkest, most savage epoch of our history. Feudalism reigned supreme; that redoubtable institution had recently come into existence, without having yet at its side the Christian counterpoise of chivalry. But if we make a leap of two or three hundred years, and arrive at the XIIth and XIIIth centuries, all becomes brilliant, and history can furnish the list of all the schools that then existed even in the smallest villages. These statistics are extant, and can be consulted; and from so many accumulated documents, which extend from 529 to 1790, the conclusion, rigorously scientific, must be drawn that “from a distant period, even at the foundation of our parishes, the clergy in the country dispensed instruction to the agricultural classes. It was thus throughout the middle ages; and even at a recent epoch we have seen the priests in many parishes perform the functions of teachers.”[202] What do our adversaries think of such exact testimony? All the schools, then, having been founded by the church, what satanic skill was needed to persuade the people that the church had not established one!

Still more scandalous is the objection that the church has failed in her errand of mercy; for they accuse her of not having sufficiently loved the poor and abandoned. We were stupefied, several years ago, to find this strange assertion in a celebrated review: that the church owed to the Protestants the idea of the Sisters of Charity. Now, we have before our eyes acts truly innumerable, establishing clearly that there were many thousand institutions of charity in France in the XIIth and XIIIth centuries. During the first ages of the church, in the midst of the persecution, the poor, _all poor_, were assisted in their homes by the deacons; and, after the persecutions, these same poor were reunited in splendid palaces, which were divided into as many classes as there were miseries to relieve. But for the fear of being called pedants, we would cite here the _Bretotrophia_, or asylums for children; the _Nosocomia_, or houses for the sick; the _Orphanotrophia_, reserved for orphans; and the _Gerontocomia_, consecrated to old age.

Such establishments continued to exist from the XIIth and XIIIth centuries in all the episcopal cities, in the monastic centres, and in the humblest parishes, where they never ceased, during the Christian ages, to soothe the suffering, feed the hungry, counsel the erring, and instruct the ignorant. By these we are easily led to the XIVth and XVth centuries, when we behold so many hospitals, so many charitable institutions, flourishing on the surface of the Christian soil. Where are the tears the church has not dried? the nakedness she has not covered? the captives she has not redeemed? the sick she has not visited? the strangers she has not received? the dead she has not buried with her tears? the sinners she has not pressed to her heart? the children she has not made smile, and has not instructed and consoled? the laborers she has not loved? This is a blow to error and misrepresentation; the proofs are clear—you can, you _must_ read them.

Again, they object that “the church does not occupy herself at the present time with the _social, the labor question_.” I can show a hundred books, bearing the greatest Catholic names, entirely consecrated to this new science. For eighteen hundred years, the church has not ceased for an instant to put political economy into action; for she has not ceased an instant to lean towards all miseries to relieve them; towards all enjoyments to purify them. Without ever having regarded sacrifice and resignation as the last solution of the social problem; without ever having renounced the hope of seeing the reign of God in a happier future, she has never ceased to preach resignation to the weak, and sacrifice to the powerful. For eighteen hundred years, the church has also written her economical theory; for, on account of the intimate connection between the social question and theology, it can be said with all truth that, up to the XIXth century, there have been as many books written of political economy as treatises of theology.

Thanks be to God, the day has arrived when a science has been founded entirely consecrated to the study of the social question. Far from recoiling before it, the church has valiantly advanced to the charge. Undoubtedly she has a hundred other works on hand, and is obliged to choose the hour when she commences the task; the hour has sounded in this same house, where you listen to me with so much patience; every Monday a modest council is held, which also wishes to take the name of _Jésus-Ouvrier_. From all parts of Paris come representatives of the religious orders, and for that they joyfully sacrifice every occupation; they occupy themselves with the labor question and the workman. These meetings last two, three, and even four hours. They seek to study the principles which govern this question; the history of the efforts that have been made until the present day in favor of the workman; the obstacles which oppose the solution of this grand problem; and, finally, the remedies which can be brought to bear upon these accumulated evils. This is what is done by these priests, these religious, these Catholics; they will review one after the other the workman, the workingman’s family, the workingman’s association. This is the plan of the book whose materials they are gathering; these are the three parts of a species of theology of labor which they are preparing in concert. In twenty other places in Paris are held twenty other assemblies, not less Catholic, animated by the same spirit, pursuing the same end; and we can now say that the principle of Catholic social economy is erected.

I will now conclude, and throw a last glance over the space we have traversed together. I commenced with the cross, and will finish with it.

In one of our romances of chivalry, it is related that the wood of the cross borne in front of the Christian army in a battle against the Saracens suddenly assumed gigantic and miraculous proportions; it touched the sky, and was more luminous than the sun. The infidels, seized with terror, broke and fled, and the Christians counted another victory. The cross of the Circles of Workingmen is small, very small, and will not probably be the subject of such a prodigy; nevertheless, I hope that its gentle light will end by assuring the victory; and the victory that we desire is that the workman may be thrown in the arms of Jesus Christ.

THE TEMPLE.

“Know you not that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost?”—1
Cor. vi. 19.

Come, I have found a temple where to dwell:
Sealed up and watched by spirits day and night;
Behind the veil there is a crystal well;
The glorious cedar pillars sparkle bright,
All gemmed with big and glistening drops of dew
That work their way from out yon hidden flood
By mystic virtue through the fragrant wood,
Making it shed a faint, unearthly smell;
And from beneath the curtain that doth lie
In rich and glossy folds of various hue,
Soft showers of pearly light run streamingly
Over the checkered floor and pavement blue.
Oh! that our eyes might see that fount of grace!
But none hath entered yet his own heart’s holy place.

—_Faber._

AN EVENING IN CHAMBLY.

SOME years ago, upon occasion of a visit to Rev. F. Mignault, at Chambly, we were most agreeably surprised to meet an old and valued friend whom we had not seen or even heard from for many years. We had known him as a Protestant physician in Upper Canada, and our surprise was none the less to see him now in the habit of a Catholic priest.

After the first salutations, tea was served, when we all withdrew to the cosey parlor of our reverend host—which none can ever forget who have once participated in its genial warmth, and inhaled the kindly atmosphere of its old-time hospitality—and settled ourselves for a long winter evening of social delight.

Our chat was opened by eager inquiries of the friend, whom we had known as Dr. Morris, touching the change in his religion and profession. After some hesitation, and smiling at the urgency of our request for his narrative, he complied, saying:

“Should the tale tire you, let this challenge stand
For my excuse.”

My medical course was completed in a Scotch university, at an earlier age than was usual with students of the profession.

Immediately after receiving my diploma, I joined a colony of my countrymen who were leaving for the wild regions of Upper Canada. After our arrival, not relishing the rough life in “the bush,” I decided to settle in the little village of Brockville, instead of remaining with the colony.

During the progress of the last war between Great Britain and the United States, I had a professional call to go up the St. Lawrence, a two days’ journey.

It was a glorious morning in June when, having accomplished the object of my visit, I set out on my return trip. I was then a stranger to that region, and, attracted by the peculiar beauty of the scenery on the river, I determined to leave the dusty highway, and enjoy a stroll along its banks for a few miles. Accordingly, dismissing my man with the carriage, and directing him to await my arrival at a little inn some miles below, I turned my steps towards the majestic stream, whose flowing waters and wide expanse formed a leading feature of the charming landscape before me, and an appropriate finish or boundary upon which the eye rested with ever-increasing satisfaction and delight.

I had loitered on, absorbed in contemplation of the shifting scene, pausing occasionally to watch the changes wrought by the wing of the passing zephyr as it touched the polished mirror here and there, leaving a ripple more like a magic shadow upon its surface than any ruffling of its peaceful bosom, and peering into its abysses, with the eye of an eager enthusiast, to see—

“Within the depths of its capacious breast
Inverted trees, and rocks, and azure skies,”

lulled, the while, by the blissful consciousness of present beauty, to forget that—

“Garry’s hills were far remote,
The streams far distant of my native glens”—

over the thoughts of which my homesick spirit was but too prone to brood.

I had reached a close thicket of low bushes that skirted the water’s edge, when my steps were suddenly arrested by a rustling sound a little in advance of me. Peeping cautiously through the leafy screen of my secure hiding-place, I saw what seemed to my excited fancy more like an apparition from another world than aught that belonged to this. Upon the gentle slope of a hill which descended to the water, and close upon the bank, stood a gigantic tree that threw its shadows far into the stream, and at the foot of it sat a youthful maiden with a book in her hand, the rustling leaves of which had first attracted my attention. She seemed at times to pore intently over its pages, and at others to be lost in reverie, while her eyes roamed anxiously up and down the river.

As she reclined on the bank, her slight form enveloped in the cloud-like folds of a white morning-dress, it was easy to imagine her the _Undine_ of those wild solitudes, conning the mystic page that was unfolding to her the mysterious lore, hidden from mortal ken, through which the power of her enchantments should be gained and exercised. While I gazed with admiring wonder upon the serene intelligence and varying light which played about her fair features, and rested like a glory upon her uplifted brow, I was surprised by the soft tones of a voice proceeding from the tangled underwood that clothed the upward sweep of the hill: “Sits the pale-face alone on this bright summer morning?”

“O Magawiska! how you startled me, breaking so suddenly upon my dreams! I was indeed sitting alone under the shade of this old tree, pondering over a page in history; counting the white sails far up and down among the Thousand Islands; watching the boiling whirlpools in the waters of our dear old St. Lawrence; and thinking of more things than I should care to enumerate, when your voice broke the spell, and disenchanted me. How is it, Magawiska, that my sisters of the wilderness always approach so softly, taking us, as it were, unawares?”

“In that, we do but follow the example given by all things which the Great Spirit has created to inhabit the forest. But come away with me, my White Dove, to the wigwam. That page in history is turned, and strong hands are even now writing the next one in letters of blood! Many a white sail has glanced through the mazes of the Thousand Islands that will never thread that fairy dance again, and the waters, so pure below, are already tinged further toward their source with the heart’s blood of many a brave soldier! Let my fair one come away; for old Honey Bee, the medicine-woman, has just returned from Chippewa, and may bring some news of the gallant young captain who commands the _Water-witch_. Floated not the thoughts of my pale sister to him from the folds of the white sails she was so busy counting?”

“Nonsense, Magawiska! But your words alarm me. Surely the Honey Bee has no bad tidings for me from him you name! What can she know of him?”

“I know not; only I heard her whispering to my mother in the Indian tongue, and was sure she uttered the name of the Lightfoot more than once.”

“Well, I will go with you, and hear whatever news she has for me.”

“Will my sister venture through the Vale of the Spirit-flowers, by crossing which the distance to the wigwam is so greatly shortened?”

“Yes, if you are sure you know the way perfectly; for I have never traversed its dreary depths myself.”

“Never fear! the Dove shall be as safe in the home of the wild bird as in the nest of its mother.” Saying which, the young daughter of the woods glided away over the hill, followed by her fair companion.

As they vanished, I quietly emerged from my hiding-place and followed them at a distance, creeping cautiously along to avoid awakening any sounds in the echoing forests, into which we soon entered, that would reach the quick ear of the young native, and at the same time making a passing note of her appearance. She was quite young and beautiful for one of her race. Her form was very slight and graceful in every motion, while her light, elastic step seemed scarcely to press the tender herbage and moss under her feet in her noiseless course. As she passed along, she ever and anon cast a sly glance over her shoulder, smiling mischievously to see the difficulty with which her companion kept pace with her rapid movements through the tangled recesses of the forest. After descending the opposite side of the hill, they entered the dingle at its base to which the young squaw had alluded. I was startled when I found myself enshrouded in its dim shadows. So faint was the light therein on this cloudless June morning as to make it difficult to realize that the hour was not midnight! I could discern something white upon the ground that I conjectured was mould which had gathered in those damp shades. Upon examining more closely, I found it to be a vegetable growth, embracing in form every variety of wild flowers that abounded in the neighboring woods, but entirely colorless, owing to the total absence of light. I gathered a quantity of these singular “spirit-flowers,” which presented the appearance of transparent crystallizations, hoping to inspect them by the full light of day; but the moment they were exposed to the sun, to my great surprise they melted like snowflakes, leaving only fine fibres, like wet strings, in my hands.[203]

When they reached the wigwam, I secreted myself in a thicket near by, where I could hear the conversation between the old squaw and the beautiful stranger; for having then less knowledge of the Indian character than I afterwards acquired, I could not feel quite safe to leave her so entirely in their power. “Magawiska tells me,” she said, with the blushing hesitation of maidenly reserve, “that you have just returned from a distant voyage, and may know something of events which are taking place far up the wilderness of waters.”

“And if the Honey Bee knows, and should fill your ear with tales of bitterness, would not the pale-face say she was more ready to sting the child she loves than to nourish her with sweetness? No, my White Dove! return to the nest of thy mother, and seek not to hear of ills for which there is no cure!”

“I must know, and I will not go until you have told me!” she vehemently cried. “For the love of heaven! my mother, if you know aught of the Lightfoot, tell me; for I can bear any ills I know better than the dread of those I know not!”

“Even so; if the Bee must wound the heart she would rather die than grieve, even so; the will of the Great Spirit must be done, and may he heal what he has broken! There has been a mighty battle; the foes of thy father are the victors. The _Water-witch_ went down in the midst of the fight. The Lightfoot was known to be on deck and wounded when it sank. Thy father is maddened at the triumph of his foes, but rejoices over the fall of him whom he hated for his bravery in their cause, for his religion, and for the love the young brave had won from the only daughter of the old man’s heart and home.”

How my bosom throbbed in painful sympathy with the moans and stifled sobs that burst from the young heart, crushed under the weight of this series of dire calamities, knowing that no human aid or pity could avail for its relief! After some time, she whispered faintly: “Is there, then, no hope for the poor broken heart, so suddenly bereft of its betrothed? Oh! tell me, my good mother of the wilderness, is there no possibility that he may have escaped? If I could but see him, and hear his gentle voice utter one assurance of constancy and affection, even if it were his last, I think I could be reconciled. But this terrible, unlooked-for parting! Say, mother, may he not have escaped? May I not see him once again in life?”

“The hand of the Great Spirit is powerful to heal as to bruise! Since it was not raised to protect and snatch thy beloved from death when no other could have saved him, look to it alone, my child, for the comfort thou wilt seek elsewhere in vain! Were there not hundreds of my brethren who would gladly have given their heart’s blood for the life that was dearer than their own, and had been offered in many conflicts to shield them and theirs from danger? I tell thee, pale daughter of a cruel foe, that wailing and lamentation went up from the camp of the red men when the eyes of its fiercest warriors were melted to women’s tears at the sight I have told thee of!”

Nothing more was said, and soon after the young stranger departed, accompanied by Magawiska.

A few days later, I was summoned in the night to attend upon a wounded soldier on the American shore of the St. Lawrence. I entered a bark canoe with a tall Indian, whose powerful arm soon impelled the light vessel across the broad, swift stream. After landing, he conducted me into a dense and pathless forest, through which I had extreme difficulty in making my way with sufficient speed to keep within ear-shot of my guide. To see him was out of the question; the interlaced and overhanging foliage, though the moon was shining, excluded every ray of light, so that my course was buried in bewildering darkness. A long and fatiguing tramp through the woods brought us at length to a cluster of wigwams, and I was conducted to the most spacious one—the lodge of the “Leader of Prayer”—where I found a remarkably fine-looking young officer lying, faint from loss of blood and the fatigue of removal. A Catholic missionary, whom I had frequently met by the bedside of the sick, and in the course of his journeys from one encampment to another of his Indian missions, was sitting by him, bathing his hands and face in cold water, and whispering words of encouragement and consolation during every interval of momentary consciousness.

From him I learned that the Indians from the scene of action up the lake had brought the wounded man thus far on the way to his friends, at his earnest request. So anxious was he to reach home that he would not consent to stop for rest after they left their boat, although the increased motion renewed the bleeding of the wound, which had been partially checked, until he was so far exhausted as to become wholly unconscious, when they halted here, having brought him through the woods on a litter. The priest had given him some restoratives, but had been unable to check the flow of blood, which was fast draining the vital current. He had administered the last sacraments to the young man, who belonged to a family of Catholics who had recently removed from Utica to a new settlement on the borders of Black Lake.

I made a hasty examination, and soon discovered the position of the bullet. I succeeded in extracting it, after which the bleeding was speedily and in a great measure staunched.

From the moment I looked upon him, however, I regarded his recovery as more than doubtful. Had the case received earlier attention, and the fatigue of removal been avoided, there was a possibility that youthful energy might have carried him through the severe ordeal; though the wound would have been critical under the most favorable circumstances.

When he became conscious for a moment during the operation, and looked in my face, he comprehended the office I was performing, and read in my countenance the fears and doubts which possessed my mind.

“Do not leave me, doctor, until all is over,” he faintly said. “This reverend father will acquaint my friends with my fate, for he knows them.”

I assured him I would remain with him, and he relapsed into the stupor which I feared would be final.

We watched by him with silent solicitude. While the priest was deeply absorbed over the pages of his breviary, my thoughts wandered from the painful present back to the dear old land from which I was a lonely, homesick exile; to bright scenes of the past, fond memories of which neither time nor absence could obliterate, and drew a vivid contrast between them and the circumstances of my new life, especially at this hour. What would the dear friends with whom I had parted for ever think if they could see me in the midst of this wild and dismal scene, surrounded by the rudest features of savage life? With what dismay would they not listen to the howling of wolves and the shrieking of catamounts in the woods around us? How sadly would the continually repeated plaint of the “whippoorwill” fall upon their ear; while, to heighten the gloomy effect of the weird concert, the echoing forests resounded with the shrill notes of the screech-owl, answered, as if in derision, by their multitudinous laughing brothers, whose frantic “Ha! ha! ha!” seemed like the exulting mockery of a thousand demons over the anxious vigil in that Indian wigwam. I was gloomily pursuing this train of thought, when a slight movement near the entrance of the lodge arrested my attention, and aroused me from my reverie. Turning my eye in that direction, I perceived by the dim light the form of old Honey Bee entering softly, accompanied by a female, in whom, as she approached the wounded man and the light fell upon her face, I recognized, to my astonishment, the _Undine_ of my former adventure. But, oh! the change a few short days had wrought in that fair face! The very lineaments had been so transformed from their radiant expression of careless joy to the settled pallor and marble-like impress of poignant anguish that I could scarcely bring myself to believe it was the same.

Calmly she approached and knelt by the sufferer, taking his hand and bowing her fair forehead upon it. Thus she remained for some time in speechless agony, when my ears caught the whispered prayer: “O my God! if there is pity in heaven for a poor broken heart, let him look upon me once more! Let me hear his gentle voice once again!” Then, placing her mouth to his ear, she said clearly, in a low, pleading tone:

“Will you not speak to me once again, my own betrothed?”

Slowly, as if by a painful effort, the drooping eyelids lifted the long lashes from his cheek, and his eyes rested with unutterable tenderness upon the pale face which was bending over him. “Oh! speak to me! Say if you know me!” she pleaded, with convulsive earnestness.

Repeatedly did the colorless lips vainly essay to speak, and at length the words were wrenched from them, as it were, in broken sentences, by the agonized endeavor:

“My own, my best beloved! May God bless and comfort you! I leave you with him! He is good to the living and the dying. Trust in him, my own love, and he will never fail you. I am going to him, but I will pray for you ever, ever!” Then, with another strong effort, while a sweet smile stole over the features upon which death had set his seal, “Tell your father I forgive all!” A gurgling sound—a faint gasp—and the light went out from the large dark eyes, the hand which had held hers relapsed its grasp, and, before the holy priest had closed the prayers for the departing spirit, all was over!

It was the old, old story, repeated again and again, alike in every village and hamlet, on the bosom of old ocean, in the city and in the wilderness, through all the ages since the angel of death first spread his wings over a fallen world, and carried their dark shadow into happy homes, banishing the sunlight, leaving only the cloud. The same story, “ever ancient and ever new,” which will be repeated again and again for every inhabitant of earth until “time shall be no longer,” yet will always fall with new surprise upon the ears of heart-stricken survivors, as if they had never before heard of its dread mysteries! Thank God that it closes for those souls whose loved ones “rest in hope” with consolations that become, in time, ministering angels over life’s dark pathway, smoothing the ruggedness, lighting up the gloom, even unto the entrance of the valley whose shadows are those of death, and supporting them with tender aid through the dread passage.

Long did we remain in a silence broken only by bitter sobs pressed from the bleeding heart of that youthful mourner. One by one the Indians, each with his rosary in his hand, had entered noiselessly and reverently knelt, until the lodge was filled with a pious and prayerful assemblage.

In the course of my profession, I had witnessed many death-bed scenes, but had never become so familiar with the countenance of the pallid messenger as to be a mere looker-on. A sense of the “awfulness of life” deepened upon me with each repetition of the vision of death. But I had never before been present at one that so entirely melted my whole being as this—so striking in all the attributes of wild and touching pathos!

God forgive me! I had hitherto lived without a thought of him or his requirements, and wholly indifferent to all religion. My life, though unstained by vice, had been regulated by no religious motives, and, so far as any interest in religion was in question, beyond a certain measure of decent outward respect, I might as well have claimed to be a pagan as a Christian. I resolved by that death-bed, while I held the cold hand of that lifeless hero in mine, and mingled my tears with those of the broken-hearted mourner, that it should be so no longer! Then and there I resolved to begin a new life, and offered myself to God and to his service in whatever paths it should please his hand to point out to me.

As the morning dawned, old Honey Bee, with gentle persuasions and affectionate urgency, drew the afflicted maiden away, and I saw her no more. I assisted the good priest to prepare the remains of the young officer for the removal, which he was to conduct, and then sought his advice and guidance in my own spiritual affairs, freely opening to him the history of my whole life. After receiving such directions as I required, and promising to see him again soon at Brockville, I returned by the way I went, and never revisited that vicinity.