Chapter XXXIII: Part II: She Sang (13)

“I confess before Almighty God, to the man who has been so wronged on my account, and to my friends and neighbors, whom I have deceived”—so Lawrence Gerald’s confession began—“that I am guilty in deed, though not in intention, of the death of Madame Chevreuse, for which Mr. Schöninger is now unjustly condemned. I had gambled, and was in debt to a man who threatened to expose me if I did not pay him at once. I knew that the exposure would ruin me. I should have lost my situation, my marriage would have been prevented, and my mother’s heart would have been broken. The debt was not a new one. I had not gambled for a good while, and had resolved never to do so again; and I have kept that resolution. If I would have broken it, and increased my debt, the man would have waited. I was tempted to, but I resisted. It seemed to me better to take the money—I did not call it stealing—when I could get it, and repay it privately after my marriage. I knew that I could have it then, a little at a time. I had known many men to be excused for such things—men who had used money that belonged to others, meaning to repay it some time, and the law had not punished them severely. Yet there was not a case where the need seemed to be as great as mine. I thought of it a long time before I felt as if I could do it, and then I didn’t resolve that I would. I only felt that I would take advantage of whatever chance occurred. I never arranged anything. F. Chevreuse dropped his latch‐key into the furnace register one day when he was at my mother’s. I got it out afterward, and kept it. I knew already that the key of our street‐door would unlock his. Those two helps I regarded as an intimation of what I was to do. I even thought them providential; and I promised God that if I should succeed in getting the money and paying my debts, I would lead a good life in future. I didn’t know that I was blaspheming. Afterward I heard F. Chevreuse say just how much money he had, and where he kept it. He was talking to my mother and me. I took that as another intimation. I said, Such a good man as he would not be permitted to help me along in this way, if I were not to do what I am thinking of. Then I knew that for one night he would be away; but still I did not resolve. I only followed wherever circumstances led me; and every circumstance led me straight on to crime. We were at Mrs. Ferrier’s that evening singing, and the night was dark. If it had been a bright night, I should not have ventured to go to the priest’s door. I said to myself that it was perhaps God who had made the night dark for me. I went home from Mrs. Ferrier’s, and went to my own room, taking the key of the street‐door with me. I stayed there till all were asleep; and I thought that if my mother had left her chamber‐door open, I would not go out, for she might hear me going down‐stairs. She usually left it open, but that night it was shut. I went down the back stairs, and got out of a little window at the back of the house; and even then I did not say surely to myself what I was going to do.

“It was necessary that I should have some disguise, and I had none; but I had seen Mr. Schöninger lay his shawl down in Mrs. Ferrier’s garden, and I thought he had left it there. I took that for another sign. If the shawl were not there, I would go home again. It was there, and I wrapped myself in it, and walked toward the priest’s house, ready to turn back at the least obstacle. The only person I saw was a policeman, and he was behind me, so that I was forced to go forward. A thunder‐shower was coming up, and the sound of it deadened my steps. When I reached the door, I stopped again, and, for the first time, made a plan. If any one should find me unlocking it, I would say that my mother was sick, and I had come for Mother Chevreuse. If Andrew or Jane should meet and know me as I entered, I would tell the same story, and would ask for Mother Chevreuse, and then confess the whole truth to her. I knew she would pity, and perhaps she would help, me. If Mother Chevreuse herself should come upon me, and recognize me, I would confess to her, and beg her mercy. Nobody saw or heard me till I had got the money into my hands, and was going away; and then it was too late to confess. All my irresolution had gone away, and I was desperate. It was no longer a question of confessing to one person, but of being exposed before three, and, of course, before the world. All the excuses I had made for myself before became as nothing, and I knew that I was a thief. The money was in my hands, I had earned it, and I meant to keep it. The rest is all like a flash of lightning. Why did she cling so to me? I told her twice to let go, or I might hurt her. My blood was all in my head. If those two servants had come and seen me there, I should have killed myself before their faces. I heard their steps coming, and I pushed her with all my strength. I did not stop to think where we were. She let go then; but I have felt her soft hands clinging to me ever since. It maddens a man to have a woman’s soft hands clinging to him when he wants to get away. After that, I ran back to Mrs. Ferrier’s garden, and left the shawl, and then I went home.

“When I was sick, and thought I was going to die, and couldn’t get another priest, I confessed to F. Chevreuse, and he forgave me; but he told me that I must consent to his telling all in order to clear Mr. Schöninger as soon as I should be dead. I consented; but I did not die, and so he could do nothing. I hereby give him leave to tell all that I then told him. I have not been to confession since, because I didn’t want to give him a chance to say anything to me. I forgot then to tell him that I had the money still, but I shall give it back with this. Of course I did not dare to use it. I told the man I owed to do his worst about it, and he did nothing, only said he would wait till I could pay him. I found I had gained nothing, and lost all.

“My wife found me out, I do not know how, and I never asked; and it is she who writes this from my dictation. John, my mother’s footman, found me out, and I have never asked him how. He will sign this, but without reading it. I think he has no proof against me. F. Chevreuse knows nothing except what he has learned in the confessional. This will be left with him, to be opened four weeks from to‐day. With him, also, I leave a letter to my dearest mother, whom I am not worthy to name, and a letter for Mr. Schöninger.”

The letter to his mother was buried with her. No one ever read it, unless those dead eyes could see. The letter to Mr. Schöninger was simply to beg the forgiveness which, the writer added, he scarcely hoped to receive.

The confession was written in a clear, even hand, with evident deliberation and painstaking on the part of the amanuensis; and if the writer’s heart had trembled, not a line showed it. Only here and there a large blister on the paper showed where a tear had fallen.

Mr. and Mrs. Grundy were shocked at the writer’s insensibility; but then Annette Ferrier always was queer, they added.

Perhaps only one of the many who read that confession was aware of the sting it contained for F. Chevreuse, or dreamed that those “soft, clinging hands” would be felt by him also, as well as by the criminal, for many a day. Mr. Schöninger shrank with a pang of sympathetic pain when he saw the words, and almost wondered that Annette Gerald could, even in that moment of supreme misery, have been unaware of their cruelty.

“I own to you,” F. Chevreuse confessed years afterward to F. O’Donovan, “that when I first read those words, I realized for one moment how a man might be willing to kill another. The image of him flinging off my mother’s clinging hands—well, well! The time will never come when I can speak calmly of it. Fortunately for me then, it was Holy Week, and I had my crucified Lord before me, and plenty of work on my hands. Mr. Schöninger helped me, too. I knew what he meant, though he made no explanation. He only said, ‘Your Christ is strong, if he can keep your hand from clinching.’ ”

Christ was strong, and the Jew was yet to feel his might.

Just at present, however, he had earthly things to think of, and a trial to endure particularly disagreeable to one of his temperament. He had to be a second time the lion of the hour, to be stared at, followed, observed in all he did, listened to in all he said—in short, to be the temporary victim of public curiosity.

Conquering his disgust and annoyance, he chose the best method of making this trial a short one, by showing himself quite freely. He took rooms at a quiet hotel frequented by business men, and very seldom visited by ladies. If the mood should take him to pace his room at night, he did not choose that any sympathizing heart should be counting his footsteps. He called on his former pupils, and made appointments with them, and listened with patience to their earnest, and often tearful, protestations of regret and indignation in his regard. He gathered up into his hands, one by one, the threads of ordinary life, and tried to interest himself in them again, and to renew some of his old pleasures; but he could not unite them and weave his heart in with them as before. A gulf, of which he only now became aware, lay between him and the past. It was not the sense of wrong and loss, it was not even that he had a greater distrust of mankind; it was at once higher and deeper than anything merely personal: it was a disgust and fear of life itself, as he had seen and felt it, a sense of instability and of hollowness everywhere. His desires for wealth and power and fame dropped into an abyss, and left no sound to tell that they were substances or had encountered any substance in their descent. Like one who, walking over a bridge, suddenly perceives that, instead of solid arches of stone beneath, there is only a thin and trembling framework between him and the torrent, he felt that he might at any moment fall through into the unknown world, or into nothingness.

This man had called himself a Jew, partly from an inherited allegiance, which ran in his blood, though it was no longer niched in his brain, partly, also, from a generous unwillingness to desert the unfortunate. He cherished the fragments of his ancient traditions as the poet and the antiquary cherish the ruins of an antique temple, in which the vulgar see only broken rocks and rubbish, but from which their imaginations can rebuild portico and sculptured frieze and painted ceiling. Their eyes can discern the acanthus leaf where it lies half choked in dust, and the dying glimmer of what once was gold, and, faintly burning through its encrusting soil, the imperishable color of that rare stone, blue as the vault of a midnight sky. In the ruin of his people Mr. Schöninger still beheld and gloried in that sublime race which, in the early world, had borne the day‐ star on their foreheads.

But it was only a memory to him, and the present was all vanity.

While in prison, he had thought that liberty was, of all things, the most precious. In his emptied heart it had been the one object of longing; and in the first moments of freedom he had found it intoxicating. But the joy it gave effervesced and died away like foam, and the emptiness remained. Looking back on that prison life, he almost wondered at the agony it had caused him, or even that the shameful death which had threatened him should have had power to move him so, or that the opinions and the enmities of men should have struck such bitterness from his soul. What was it all but motes in the beam? “Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity.”

But life must be lived, and work must be done; and he took up the duties that came to hand, and performed them almost as if he loved them.

One small pleasure, indeed, he gave himself. Escaping from the city, with as much care as if he had been flying from justice, he took a long, solitary walk in the pine‐woods where, nearly a year before, he had gone with a May party, and, searching there, he brought back handfuls of pale, nodding snow‐drops, and sent them by a trusty messenger to Honora Pembroke.

“They are for her or for Mrs. Gerald, as she may choose,” he said.

She made no answer, but the messenger saw her lay the delicate blossoms in the white hand of the dead, while her tears fell on them, drop by drop.

Mr. Schöninger’s generosity of feeling would have prompted him to attend the funeral, but his good taste prevented. He would have been too much observed there. He watched the procession as it passed by his window—an old‐fashioned, solemn, genuine New‐England funeral; no mourning carriages with laughing people inside, no hired bearers but a long line of friends and neighbors, who knew and lamented the dead, walking after her with downcast faces, to stand by her grave till the earth should have covered her in.

In a town like Crichton such a death for such a cause would create a deep impression; and crowds stood all about the cottage when the friends who were admitted came out from its doors, and a grave silence prevailed in all the streets as they passed through them.

It was Good Friday; and that evening, for the first time, the new organist was to take charge of the choir in the Immaculate Conception. There was but little to do, for the singers were not in training—only a hymn or two to sing before the sermon, and nothing after.

Mr. Schöninger was glad that he should thus be able to leave the church before the sermon without seeming disrespectful to F. Chevreuse, as he would have seemed in going out and coming in again when the sermon was over. He had not the least objection to hearing Catholic sermons, provided they did not bore him—had, indeed, heard many of them; but he did not wish to hear F. Chevreuse speak on the passion and death of Christ. To him, that had always been the weakest point in the Christian theology. He could reverence almost to the verge of adoration the sublime humility and sweetness and patience of that life which they called divine; but he shrank from the agony which crowned it as something weak and unfitting. A life so perfect ending thus was to him incongruous; as though the eye, travelling up a lofty and exquisite column, should see a rude block at the top instead of a perfect capital.

“If it does not prove the falsehood of the whole,” Mr. Schöninger said to himself, “it proves a great mistake somewhere; and I would rather not hear such a man as F. Chevreuse try to make it seem reasonable.”

But he would not be in too great a hurry to go. He lingered a little, arranged the music, and stopped at the door of the choir long enough to hear the priest announce his text: _The Lord hath laid upon him the iniquities of us all_.

“My Isaiah!” he thought. “I wonder what he meant in writing that?”

“Good Friday is, to my mind, not so much a day of sorrow as a day of remorse,” the priest began. “The Jews were ungrateful, and we are ungrateful.”

“That dear, just soul!” Mr. Schöninger muttered with a smile, as he went slowly out.

Going down the stairs, he caught now and then a sentence. “We sin, and are forgiven, and then we sin again; and we sin against a God whom we acknowledge; they sinned against a God in whom they did not believe.”

And again: “Peter sinned once, but he never denied his Master a second time; Magdalene was once a sinner, but never again.”

Mr. Schöninger stopped at a narrow pointed window near the foot of the stairs, and looked out into the night. He had half a mind to go back and listen to the sermon. There was something enchaining in the way F. Chevreuse preached. His were no cut‐and‐dried orations where the form is first laid out, and each part fitted in as exact as a mosaic, and where no fault can be found, except that there is such an absence of faults. He poured his heart out; he announced a truth, and then, in a few sentences, he threw a picture before their eyes to illustrate it; he walked the platform where he stood, and seemed at times so transported by his feelings as to forget that he was not talking to himself alone.

Mr. Schöninger paused in the lower door, and listened again, hating to stay, hating still more to go away, so empty did his soul feel.

The speaker gave a brief backward glance over what he had already said. They had seen the agony in the garden, and now they were going to see what it meant. They had seen the cup put aside by the hand of Christ, and now they were going to see him drink it to the dregs. They had seen him bear uncomplainingly the stripes and the thorns, now they were going to hear him cry out in the agony of desolation.

With a rapid touch he sketched the scene—the surging, angry crowd, driving and hurrying forward a man in the midst, who drags and stumbles under a heavy cross.

The priest wrung his hands slowly, walking to and fro, with that sight before him. “O my God!” he said, half to himself, “is it thus that I see thee? Thy divinity is reduced so small—so small that it requires all the fulness of my faith to discern it. This man is covered with dust and blood. He hath fallen beneath his load, and the dust of the street is on him, on his hands, and even his face, with the blood and the sweat. They buffet him, they laugh at him”—the speaker faced his congregation suddenly, stretching out his hands to them. “A God! a God!” he cried, and was for a moment silent.

Mr. Schöninger turned away, shuddering at this image of Divinity in the dust.

Yet he had not gone far when, in spite of him, his feet were drawn back.

F. Chevreuse stood beside the great black and white crucifix, to which he did not seem to dare to lift his eyes.

“The cup is at his lips at last! _He has lost sight of the Father!_ The Lord has laid upon him the iniquities of us all. All the murders, all the adulteries of the world are on him; all the sacrileges are on him; all the brutality, the foulness, the lies, the treacheries, the meannesses, the cruelties—they are all heaped upon him. All iniquities, past, present, and to come, overclouded and hid his divine innocence out of sight. And the Father, seeing him so, relented not, spared him not, but poured on his head the full measure of his hatred of our sins, as if he were the criminal who was guilty of them all.”

Mr. Schöninger started back as if lightning had flashed in his face, uttered a faint cry, and hurried from the church.

He knew why the veil of the temple was rent and the face of the sun darkened; and he knew why the Son of God had bled at every pore.

He walked once rapidly round the square, baring his head to the tender coolness of the air. When he reached the church again, F. Chevreuse had finished speaking, and was just turning away. But he paused, as he saw Mr. Schöninger walk up the aisle as unconscious of the astonished congregation who gazed at him as if the church had been empty.

He knelt at the communion railing.

“F. Chevreuse,” he said in a voice that every one heard, so still were all, “I have not yet kissed the cross on which my God was crucified.”

F. Chevreuse drew the small crucifix from his girdle, and presented it, his hands trembling and tears rolling down his face; and all the congregation fell on their knees while the Jew kissed the cross on which his God was crucified.

To Be Continued.

The Jesuit Martyrs Of The Commune.(111)

In this little volume the Rev. F. de Ponlevoy has faithfully recorded the _Acts_, as he well entitles them, of five brave men of our own time, who went forth “rejoicing,” like the apostles of old, “that they were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus.”

The author has not attempted a biography or any detailed account of the lives of these brave men previous to their arrest “in the name of the Commune,” but simply an exact statement, far more impressive, of their known words and acts from that moment which so plainly marked them as chosen ones of God.

These Jesuit fathers suffered in most saintly companionship, and the world will heartily echo the pious wish of our author that other societies may do for their martyred brethren that which he has so lovingly accomplished for his.

The Jesuits in Paris during the war of 1870 saw plainly the gathering signs of darker days yet to come for France; but it is not in their traditions to yield anything to fear, and so they were resolved, the moment the armistice was concluded, to open their school of S. Geneviève and College of Vaugirard. At the very beginning of the war with Prussia, these two establishments had been freely passed over to the military authorities for the use of the sick and wounded, hundreds of whom had been there received and tenderly cared for, many of the fathers attaching themselves to the ambulances and hospitals with the utmost devotion. Consequently these buildings now needed many repairs and to be almost entirely refurnished. The residence in the Rue Lafayette had fared better, as the greater part of the community were Germans who had been obliged to leave France at the beginning of the war, while the house fell under the protection of the American minister, charged by Prussia to watch over the interests of its people in Paris. Add to which this modest mission had the deserved reputation of being very poor—not much of a bait for the blood‐ hounds of the Commune. At the house in the Rue de Sèvres such measures were taken as prudence seemed to suggest, leaving the rest to Providence. Thus at first it had seemed best to keep some members of the order in Paris—men at once necessary and willing to stay. Some were sent to the provinces, and others remained scattered throughout the ungrateful capital. At the conclusion of the armistice the College of Vaugirard was hastily prepared for pupils, and its reopening fixed for the 9th of March, by which time nearly two hundred students had applied for admission. But on the 18th the long‐threatened revolution burst forth, and the rector, more anxious for the pupils than for the fathers, hurried both to the country‐house of the college, at Moulineaux, between Issy and Meudon. However, they were soon compelled to retreat precipitately, first to Versailles, and finally to Saint Germain‐en‐Laye; for, placed exactly in the narrow belt between the belligerent lines, they found themselves, upon the breaking out of hostilities between Paris and Versailles, veritably between two fires. The deserted College of Vaugirard was surrounded, occupied, and pillaged, but no one was there to be arrested.

The school of S. Geneviève required more time for repairs, and was to be opened on March 20; but the insurrection, coming in the interval, necessitated new delays, and parents were notified to await further announcements. The rector, F. Léon Ducoudray, born at Laval, May 6, 1827, a man of great spirit and energy, was not one to lose time or to be dismayed in the hour of trial. He at once sent out four of the fathers, one to negotiate a loan in England or Belgium to meet the exigencies of the moment, and the others to seek in the provinces an asylum for the exiled school, which was finally removed to a country‐house at Athis‐Mons, on the railway line to Orléans, not far from Paris. The pupils were notified that the school would open on April 12; the rector, who had remained in Paris to superintend the final arrangements, was to join his community on Monday, the third.

On Sunday, the second, F. Ducoudray perceived that F. Paul Piquet, a sick priest left at S. Geneviève, was rapidly sinking, and at a quarter‐past eight in the evening this good father had the happiness of leaving this world and its momentarily‐increasing trials. It was a great loss to the house, and at this time a very painful embarrassment. The next morning (Monday) the Commune issued a decree confiscating all the furniture and property belonging to religious houses, and at S. Geneviève they every instant expected a visit on the part of the new rulers of the city. Nevertheless, F. Ducoudray sent for several of the fathers to come up from Athis to attend the funeral ceremonies of the deceased priest, set for Tuesday, April 4.

All at once, just after midnight on Tuesday, before these fathers had returned to Athis, the buildings were encircled by a battalion of National Guards, armed to the teeth. The Rue Lhomond, the Rue d’Ulm, the Passage des Vignes, the very woodyard at the foot of the garden, all were guarded. There were repeated blows at the door of No. 18. The brother porter went at once to say that the keys, according to custom, were in the rector’s room, and that he would go and get them. But at this simple and reasonable answer the outsiders got into a rage; a summons was sounded three times at rapid intervals; the whole neighborhood was startled by a general discharge at all the windows of the Rue Lhomond; there were loud threats of bringing cannons and _mitrailleuses_ from the Place de Panthéon near by. Presently the doors were opened, and the rector himself appeared, calmly requesting to be allowed to make some remarks in the name of common justice and of individual liberty. But the day for these things had gone by. For sole response the leader signified, revolver in hand, that he constituted the rector his prisoner in the name of the Commune, and should occupy and search the house for the arms and munitions of war therein concealed. But in reality they were here, as everywhere else, on a hunt for the cash‐box. “That which we most need,” said a member of the Commune, “is money.”

Right away every one in the house was on his feet, and each one followed his instinct; but first of all one priest hurried to the private chapel, where, for precaution, the Blessed Sacrament had been previously placed, and hastened to secure it against profanation.

The envoys of the Commune were in number and force enough to carry on several operations at once. They arrested everybody they could lay their hands on—priests, lay brothers, even the servants of the school—and, as fast as they found them, seated them in the entrance hall, and kept them there for several hours. They ransacked the entire house; the rector himself led them everywhere. The search was very long and very minute, without the desired result; for they found no arms and very little money. F. Ducoudray, without falsifying himself in the slightest, replied with so much unconcern, with such dignity and politeness, that they said to each other in astonishment: “What a man this is! What energy of character!” At last, after three painful hours, they took him to the hall; but even from the first moment they separated him from his brethren, and put him in a little vestibule of the chapel in front of the parlors. It is almost superfluous to add that the pillage of the house commenced almost at once, accelerated, and the next day completed, by bands of women and children.

At five in the morning the recall was sounded; it was the signal for defiling and departing for the préfecture of the police. The prisoners were ranged between two lines of National Guards. First came the rector, a little ahead of the others; behind him the Rev. FF. Ferdinand Billot, Emile Chauveau, Alexis Clerc, Anatole de Bengy, Jean Bellanger, Theodore de Regnon, and Jean Tanguy, four lay brothers, and seven servants.

“Well,” said F. Ducoudray, with a radiant countenance, to F. Caubert, who was nearest him. “_Ibant gaudentes_,(112) did they not?”

“What is he saying there?” asked the uneasy guards. F. Caubert repeated the sentence; God knows what they understood by it!

At the préfecture a major exclaimed: “Why have you brought me these rascals (_coquins_)? Why didn’t you shoot them on the spot?”

“Gently,” answered one of the guard; “it is necessary to proceed calmly, or you yourself might get it before the rest.”

The same officer then asked, revolver in hand, for the director.

“I am here,” replied F. Ducoudray, advancing.

“I know that you have arms concealed in your house.”

“No, sir.”

“I have it on certain authority.”

“If there are any, it is without my knowledge.”

“You have an iron will. We are going to see about that, we two; and if we do not find them, you do not get back here.”

Then followed a number of charges against the priests, such as poisoning the sick and wounded in the hospitals and ambulances, perversion of youth, and complicity with the government of Versailles. F. Ducoudray, following the example of his divine Master, made no reply, and, after being loaded with insults, was finally taken secretly and locked up in a cell of the _Conciergerie_ prison. The others were confined in a common hall of the depot prison, intended for vagrant women.

In the meantime, two priests and one brother, who had escaped detection in the tumult, remained at S. Geneviève. The brother was an invalid confined to his bed, and the two priests, one of whom had been concealed all night in the garden, met in his room after the guards had left, and it remained for nearly two months virtually their prison.

The saintly president of the house of the Rue de Sèvres, F. Pierre Olivaint, had seen all his flock sheltered from the gathering storm, and on that Monday was alone in the house with one reverend companion, F. Alexis Lefebvre, and several devoted brothers, incapable of fear. All day long warnings and entreaties poured in upon him to cause him to fly in advance of the impending visit from the Commune. “But what would you have?” he answered tranquilly. “I am like the captain of a vessel, who must be the last to leave the ship. If we are taken to‐day, I shall have but one regret: that it is Holy Tuesday, not Good Friday.”

“Why, now, my child,” he said again, at six o’clock, to one who implored him to save himself while there was yet a moment, for it was certain there was to be a visit on the part of the Commune that very evening—“why, now, my child, why do you excite yourself? Is it not the best act of charity we can perform to give our life for the love of Jesus Christ?” And then he went to the lower floor, facing the hall door, and calmly went on with his office. “I am waiting,” he said to a friend who passed by, pressing his hand.

Just as they were assembling in the refectory for the evening collation, at the usual hour of a quarter‐past seven, the brother porter was summoned; a delegate of the Commune was at the door, behind him a company of National Guards. The brother was instructed to detain them in the vestibule or in the parlor until the superior himself should come. Brother Francis did so, in spite of the impatience and threats of the visitors. In anticipation of this visit, but two hosts had been left in the morning, and now each father hurried to his room, and each had his _viaticum_ ready. F. Lefebvre returned the first, soon followed by F. Olivaint. The delegate announced the object of his mission—to look for arms and munitions kept in reserve by the Jesuits; but, being himself called away on important business, deputed citizen Lagrange to take his place. This man, well worthy of the deed, ordered every avenue of escape to be guarded, and then, followed by nearly half his force, began the tour of inspection, accompanied by F. Olivaint, and preceded by two brothers, one with a light, the other carrying the keys; two other brothers were stationed at the entrance with the guards, and, as each room was examined, Lagrange left two of his men to guard it. To have any idea of the shameless impiety and vulgar insolence of these functionaries of the Commune, one must have seen and heard them; for three hours the search continued, amid threats and mockery, through all which F. Olivaint remained calm and reserved.

The critical moment came while in the procurator’s chamber, where the cash‐box was discovered. “Hurry and open it,” they cried. “Where’s the key?”

“I haven’t it; it is not even here,” answered F. Olivaint. “Our father procurator, who is absent, has it with him.” Then came the tempest; one of the brothers was sent off with three guards, arms in hand, to hunt up the father procurator, and bring him back alive or dead. In the end, F. Caubert really did arrive, and opened the box. It was empty. Naturally, the siege had suppressed all receipts and increased all expenses; for a long time the Jesuits had lived only by borrowing. “We are robbed,” Lagrange exclaimed. “All right, the superior and the steward are my prisoners, in the name of the Commune. Off to the préfecture of police!” F. Lefebvre begged to be taken with his brethren. “No, no,” was the answer. “You stay here and hold this house in the name of the Commune.” And actually the sentence was prophetic; for the house guarded by F. Lefebvre was spared with him.

At about half‐past eleven o’clock the two prisoners departed, never to return; they sought in vain for a carriage, to make the long transit. As they passed out, F. Olivaint saw, in the crowd in the street, a group of compassionate friends; he saluted them with a smile, as if to say: “Weep not for me.”

Lagrange and his company quartered themselves at the Place Vendôme, as proud of their prowess that night as if they had captured Versailles; a single _piquet_ of armed men took the prisoners to the préfecture, and there, instead of being placed with the others in the common hall, they were immediately and secretly locked up in the cells of the _Conciergerie_.

“FF. Olivaint and Caubert are in prison,” F. Lefebvre wrote to our author at Versailles. “They absolutely would not take me. I am alone at the house, with Brother Bouillé, both fearless, thank God! The others are dispersed, and come from time to time to see me. I have placed the Blessed Sacrament in the gallery near my room, and, when they return, I shall consume the sacred hosts. The church will be closed. They are arresting the priests. Monseigneur himself is at the préfecture of police; they say these are the hostages, I am told. Pray, pray for me, my father! Oh! how happy I should be to give my life for our Lord!”

F. Ducoudray accepted his imprisonment without any surprise. “Before long,” he had said, on March 19, to the Prince de Broglie—“before long our churches will be closed, our houses devastated, our persons arrested, and God knows who will regain his liberty. The things which are to be done will have a particular character of hatred to God, and—that which is very sad for a priest to say—there will prove to be no other argument for the miserable ones who are to be masters of Paris than the cannon. I have lived for seven months in the very midst of these men, and I have not met with one heart or one honest mind among them.”

“For six months,” he wrote under date of Feb. 20, “I have seen only grief and mourning.... My God! must I say to you that I can still hope? Paris has lost the last fibre of moral and religious sense. Its population is mad, delirious. Can we hope for the return of divine mercy when this immense city thinks only of founding a society based on the absence of religion and on the hatred of God? Only a miracle can help us out of the abyss in which we are plunged. I hold my peace.... My heart is too heavy, and my soul too gloomy.”

F. Olivaint, loving his country not less, was filled with joy from the very moment of his arrest. “_Ibant gaudentes_,” he said with sparkling eyes to the archbishop’s secretary, who passed his grating—“_Ibant gaudentes_; it is for the same Master!” “France,” he said, “like the world, requires to be ransomed by blood—not the blood of criminals, which sinks into the ground, and remains mute and barren, but the blood of the just, which cries to heaven, invoking justice and imploring mercy.”

“There must be victims,” said F. Caubert. “It is God who has chosen them.”

On the evening of Holy Thursday there came a change. The archbishop, the president, Bonjeau, FF. Ducoudray, Clerc, and de Bengy, each in a separate compartment of a prison carriage, were conveyed from the _Conciergerie_ to the prison of Mazas. F. Olivaint and F. Caubert were left alone at the _Conciergerie_, in separate cells, debarred from all possible communication.

“And from this hour,” cries F. Ponlevoy, in tender remembrance,(113) “I seem to myself to be really writing an episode of the Catacombs. The church is ever fruitful in generous souls, but it is the hour of trial that more than any lays bare the depths of the heart; and if, on one side, there is in the martyrs a patience beyond all grief, there is in the Christian a charity stronger than death itself.”

A system of correspondence was organized outside those now hallowed prison walls, and continued to the very end, consoling and sustaining the captives, and laying up treasures for the faithful far and wide through the edifying little notes thus preserved. And finally, on Thursday, April 13, safe means were found to convey to the prisoners at the _Conciergerie_ not simply a consolation, but the Consoler himself. Only a few hours after this was accomplished, FF. Olivaint and Caubert were removed to Mazas, whither three of their order, as we have seen, had preceded them.

The prison of Mazas, on the boulevard of the same name, is constructed on the system of cells. At its door all motion ceases; life itself fades out; the isolation is complete; the unfortunate detained there are buried alive. But the love and devotion of the faithful contrived to pierce even these gloomy walls, and letters were again carried back and forth between the imprisoned priests and their exiled brethren. These letters contained few facts, but, put together, make a most exquisite journal of the interior life of the saintly captives. F. Ducoudray opens this series of letters by a formal one to his superior, giving an account of the situation and of his own personal disposition. “You know our history and its sadness,” he writes.

“Here I pass much time in prayer, and a little in suffering. Isolation, separation, uncertainty, and, above all, the privation of not being able to celebrate Mass—this is indeed cruel!

“No possible communication _cum concaptivis meis_. They are there, near to me, in the same corridor; that is all I know.

“This is the part it is the will of God we should perform. For us, we have only to follow the apostle’s counsel: ‘_In omnibus exhibeamus nosmetipsos, sicut Dei ministros, in multa patientia, in tribulationibus,... in carceribus, in seditionibus, ... per gloriam et ignobilitatem, per infamiam et bonam faman_.’(114)

“Say to my friends,” F. Olivaint wrote to one of his brethren, “that I do not find anything to complain of; health pretty good; not a moment of _ennui_ in my retreat, which I continue up to the very neck.... I know nothing of my companions.” “I thank you from the bottom of my heart,” to another, “for your charity to the poor prisoners. Here is a work I did not fully comprehend until I was in prison. How well you practise it—I might almost say too well!... No, the time does not seem long to me.” ... “In reality,” he writes again, “I do very well in body; and as for the spirit, it seems to me that I am making a retreat of benediction, _Deo gratias_.” ... Later on: “I am at the twenty‐fourth day of my retreat. I had never hoped that a retreat of a month would be granted me; and see, now I am touching that term. Well, if we do not regain our liberty by the end of the month, I shall not, I hope, lose anything in this way by the prolongation of the trial. You will understand that here we have no news to give. And those frightful cannon that never cease grumbling! But that, too, reminds me to pray for our poor country. If it were required to give my miserable life to put an end to its troubles, how quickly I would make the sacrifice!”

Those cannon jarred on the ears of the other captives. “We hear day and night the roar of cannon,” F. Clerc wrote to his brother. “I conclude that the siege and my detention will not end to‐morrow.... People talk of the cloister of religious houses; that of Mazas is not to be despised.... We have neither Mass nor sacraments. Never, I well believe, did prisoners more desire them. I pray to the good God, I study, I read, I write a little, and I find time goes quickly, even at Mazas.... Do not take further measures to see me; I fear further efforts would bring you annoyance, and I have little hope of the result. These gates will be opened by another hand than yours; and, if they open not, we know well that we must be resigned.... I am proud and happy to suffer for the name I bear. You know well the blow did not take me by surprise. I did not desire to evade it, and I wish to support it. I do not hope for the deliverance of which you speak.... The less I am master of myself, the more I am in the hands of God; there will happen to me what he wills, and he will give me to do that which he wishes I should do. _Omnia passum in eo qui me confortat._”

F. Caubert writes in the same tone: “My health up to the present remains good. For the rest, I have all that is necessary, and even over. Besides, the moral serves to strengthen the physical in giving courage and strength. Now, this comes to me because I am full of confidence in God, and most happy to do his will in all that he really demands of me. For the rest, the prison rule, in spite of its stern and austere side, is not in itself injurious to the health. They have us take the air every day for an hour, solitarily, and each in his turn. The delicate stomachs can obtain the food they need. Twice a week they give us soup and a bit of beef. The house is conducted with propriety, order, and regularity.... We can visit the doctor or the apothecary daily. There is a library comprising a pretty good number of books of great variety, and any one can ask for them to pass the time. As for the details of the _ménage_, that which they bring me is quite sufficient, and I need no more. It simplifies matters not to have my cell encumbered, otherwise I should get things a little pell‐ mell.”

To hear these good fathers, everything was right, everybody good to them. Undoubtedly they suffer, but, as they are patient, they suffer less than others; as they have hope, they endure better than others; finally, as they love Christ crucified, their joy is greater than their pain. A Frenchman and a Jesuit conquered by hard treatment or most distressing privation! Never! Starving, dying by inches, in stripes and in prison, under the tomahawk, at the stake, in hunger and thirst, in burning India or the snows of Canada, at the mercy of Western savages or Paris revolutionists, it is ever the same thing—everything is right and nice and fine; much better than could be expected. The story, fresh in our minds, of our own early missionaries, exiles of the first Revolution, prepares us to hear the sweet patience of the American forests echoing to‐day in the prison of Mazas. God wills it. _Ad majorem Dei gloriam._

M. Ponlevoy, who had the tender curiosity to visit the prison of Mazas on a holiday, when it could easily be inspected, says: “I saw those three stories of long corridors, with double galleries, radiating around a centre where lately there was a chapel—ah! if the Commune had but had at least the humanity to leave to the captives the divine Prisoner of the tabernacle—on both sides, on all the floors, the doors loaded with bolts and provided with regular gratings, and those narrow cells, of which the inventory could be made in a single glance! Facing the entrance, the grated window, which measured the air and light; in one corner the hammock; opposite, the little table, with just room enough for a straw chair; behind the door a plank for a cupboard, a broom, and some pieces of coarse crockery completed the furniture. As for the famous promenade so often mentioned in their letters, it was a little triangular prison‐yard, shut in by a grating in front, and walls on the sides, without shelter anywhere, and no other seat than a stone in one corner. During their solitary recreation the captives could absolutely see no one, unless the guard under the arch who held them in surveillance.”

But the human heart is still human, however resigned the will. Say what they would, the prison was still a prison, and Mazas certainly was more like Calvary than paradise. After all, Christians are not stoics, and the martyr himself feels the weakness of the flesh, that he may overcome it by the vigor of the spirit.

“This poor heart!” writes brave F. Ducoudray. “It sometimes will be tempted to escape and to bound. The imagination willingly takes its part. Neither lets itself be ruled as much by reason as I would wish. Thence come, at times, certain fits or impressions of weariness, the suffering of the soul, throwing it into languor, discouragement, uneasiness, and disgust. ‘_Magnum est et val de magnum, tam humano quant divino posse carere solatio et pro honore Dei, libenter exilium cordis velle sustinere._’(115) There is matter in that one comprehends only when one feels it. I had the good thought, when leaving the house, to put into my pocket a small volume containing the _New Testament_ and the _Imitation_. I have read S. Paul much. What a great and admirable heart! It expands my soul to read it, for it has been ‘_in laboribus plurimus, in carceribusabundantius_,’(116) as he writes himself. And I, though I am yet but a _carcere uno_, I boast of suffering somewhat. But if we are those of whom it is written: ‘_Eritis odio omnibus propter nomen meum_,’(117) how contemptible our tribulations in comparison with those of the great apostle!” “I am still,” he wrote at another time, May 5, “more ill omened than the greatest pessimist. You tell me they fix the 20th as the final term of the civil war. I much fear it will be prolonged even to the 30th. Military operations go slowly. The war beyond the ramparts offers difficulties; the war of the streets has its difficulties also—most bloody ones, alas!... We touch upon the week of great events, or, at least, the beginning of great events.... What a punishment! It was expected. It is here.”

Two or three human consolations were vouchsafed the prisoners, after a time. On May 5 they were permitted to read several of the daily papers approved by the Commune, and about the same time F. Ducoudray had the inestimable privilege of twice seeing and saluting, at a short distance, F. Clerc, and of once seeing far off F. Bengy, his beloved brethren and fellow‐prisoners.

In May another favor was vouchsafed. F. Clerc’s brother had been incessant in his attempts to obtain an interview with him, but without any success; at last a dear friend, a lady, received permission to visit the prisoner, and, as a French lady must needs have an escort, she took M. Clerc for hers. This was an inexpressible happiness to the noble‐hearted priest, and his thanks to God for the favor were boundless. F. Caubert, whose simple and exquisite letters, full of golden thoughts, we would gladly linger over if there were only space enough, received, May 11, a visit from the Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States, which was very agreeable to him. “It appears,” he said, “that I had been recommended to him by some person of his acquaintance. He came to inquire most cordially, in true American style, how I got along, and if I had need of anything.” Here, in uncertainty, inaction, and shut out from all the world, these brave men made light of all the trials and privations to which their bodies were so long and painfully subjected. The Communists knew too much, however, to think of breaking their spirit by bodily suffering; they had the means of creating cruel anguish in the heart of every priest within those prison walls, and well they knew how to use it. From every cell came a cry such as no rack or stake could draw from them.

On Easter Sunday, fifth day of their confinement, F. Clerc wrote to his brother: “To‐day is the feast of feasts, the Pasch of the Christians, the day the Lord has made. For us there is no Mass to say or hear.” Just at the hour of leaving the _Conciergerie_, FF. Olivaint and Caubert had the happiness, so longed for and so unexpected, of receiving the “Consoler himself.” Then came the long days at Mazas, and no such consolation possible. “Oh! if we could but soon ascend the altar!” cries F. Ducoudray in the early days at Mazas. “Here is a privation to which I can never become accustomed.”

“Here,” F. Clerc wrote May 5—“here no confession, no Mass, not even on Sunday. We are lodged, fed—it is enough for animals.”

“I pass my time,” F. Ducoudray again, “praying much, suffering some; for the privation of the Holy Mass, the isolation, the separation, are cruel, but I see not the end.”

On May 8 an order was promulgated which put an end to all visits; on that very day F. Ducoudray had expected to receive our Lord himself. “What a sacrifice!” he exclaims. “I have offered to our Lord this hard trial, incomparably more painful yesterday than ever, on account of the precious pledge of the love of the divine Master. I seek to make my poor heart the altar on which I sacrifice. I shall add that of yesterday as new fuel to the sacrifice.”