Chapter XLII: Part IV: She Sang (3)

“But all paganism was a falsified adumbration of the Incarnation; the gods for ever assuming a human form, and the men becoming gods,” said Mary. “It had that germ of truth in it which every system must have to be built at all, no matter in what monstrous form. But it required revelation to tell us that the ‘Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst men.’ And that alone explains nature. She is the herald, the servant, or rather the slave, of Him by whom and for whom all things were created. She speeds on her way in the full vigor of those laws which were impressed upon her as she first sprang from the hand of her Creator. She does not stop to share our griefs or our joys, for she has a higher mission. But she has ceased to be terrible to us, for faith has unveiled her face, and her harmonious forces no longer scare us by their inexorable relentlessness. Her one mission is to sing of God, and repeat to Time the refrain of Eternity.”

“Why, then, do we sometimes pine for her sympathy?” said I.

“Ah! Miss Jane,” exclaimed Don Emidio, “that is because we are for ever looking for sympathy in the wrong place and from the wrong people.”

“Not always,” I replied. What made me say so? And why did Don Emidio change color and look at me so fixedly? I was still wondering when we reached home.

Mary and I were, as usual in the evening, sitting in the _loggia_. But Frank was not with us, and I missed his genial talk and the odor of his cigar.

“What has become of Frank this evening, Mary?”

“He has gone down to see the Vernons, and said he should persuade them to come to us.”

“I hope he will succeed, for I do not like his spending his evenings away from us. This is not the first nor the fourth time he has gone to Casinelli as soon as he got up from dinner.”

“Ah! well, Jane, we must not be selfish. He has his life to live, as you have yours; and I must expect one day to lose you both.”

I felt my heart stop, and then beat violently. What did Mary mean? And why did some veil seem suddenly to fall from my eyes? It was some moments before 1 spoke; and then I tried to say in my ordinary voice: “You have some presentiment about Frank, Mary. What is it?”

“I have presentiments about both of you. But I do not want to force your confidence.”

In a moment I was kneeling by her side. “Dearest Mary, do you suppose I have any secrets from you? I tell you everything. If I do not tell you more, it is because I know no more.” It was a sudden impulse, dim but overwhelming, which made me add those strange words. Mary looked at me intently. “Has it never struck you that Frank has a reason for going so often to the Villa Casinelli, as Emidio has a reason for coming so often here?”

Our eyes met for one moment. Then I hid my face in my hands, and burst into tears.

“O Mary! what bitter‐sweet things are you saying? I do not want to lose Frank, and I do not want to leave you, or to tread in other paths than those I have known since my childhood. Are you sure it is so? Why have I not known it till now? And even now I doubt.”

“That is because you were not in the least looking out for it, and were absorbed in other thoughts, preventing that retrospection which would have shown you that Emidio’s manner towards you has been intensifying with every day of our stay here. And now what answer will you give when the time comes?”

“Do not ask me yet, dear Mary. I must have leisure to reflect. At this moment my heart is more full of Frank and Elizabeth than of anything else.”

“Ah! my dear, he could not have made a wiser choice; she is a girl after my own heart, so true, so tender, so good, and so utterly unselfish.”

“I only hope she will not spoil Frank.”

“I am not afraid of that, for she has a high sense of duty for herself and for all who approach her.”

“And what is to become of Ida and of you, Mary?”

“I cannot think,” said Mary with a sweet, sad smile. “But I suppose we shall both of us be happy in the happiness of those who are so dear to us. It is worse for me than for her. She loses a sister. I lose a brother and sister both.”

“You don’t know that, Mary. Nobody has proposed to me, and, if somebody did, I am not certain what answer I should give.”

“But I am,” rejoined Mary.

I clapped my hand over her mouth, exclaiming, “Don’t say it, Mary dear. Let me be free and feel free. I am frightened at the thought of promising myself to any one, even where I may feel I could love.”

“Be free, dear sister, until the moment has come when you are sure it is God’s will you should enter on another phase of woman’s destiny.”

“And may I never do so, except to accomplish his will!” I replied; and with one long kiss on dear Mary’s brow I turned away, for we heard approaching footsteps.

Frank and Elizabeth entered first. Ida and Padre Cataldo followed. I looked to see if there were a fifth figure behind, and was rather relieved to find Don Emidio was not there. I needed time to collect my thoughts before I saw him again. Perhaps, after all, Mary was mistaken, and attached more importance to this matter than was necessary. At any rate, I was in no hurry to see Don Emidio again.

Frank seemed in high spirits, and Elizabeth looked serenely, calmly happy. Her soft manner and her slow, graceful movements had long ago won for her the nickname of Pussy; particularly as her velvet ways were not unmixed with a playful slyness; so that from time to time she came out with some remark far more acute and incisive that at first you would have given her credit for. It was a relief to me when I heard Frank say that he had been particularly anxious to induce Padre Cataldo to join us, because he had promised to give us the account of an unfortunate man whose execution he had attended some years ago in the course of his priestly ministrations. Ida was looking as thoughtful as Mary; and I saw her eyes constantly wandering to where Frank and Elizabeth were sitting together. We were all too preoccupied to talk, but were very glad to listen to a long story.

“Frank tells us, reverend father,” began Mary, “that some twenty years ago you attended the execution of a poor criminal. It would interest us very much if you would give us the particulars. In what part of Italy did it occur?”

“It took place in the Basilicata,” replied the father, “and the whole province was filled with consternation; for the culprit did not belong to the lower ranks of life, but was a gentleman by birth, education, and position. He was the proprietor of a château and a considerable patrimony near one of the towns of the province, and his crime was the murder of his own brother. For many generations the family had had an undesirable reputation for deeds of violence and sudden acts of rage or revenge. It was not the first time that the history of the family chronicled some bloody act; though it was the first time, at least in modern days, that any member of this unfortunate house had suffered the utmost penalty of the law. I am unable to tell you what gave rise to the violent feeling of hatred which the elder brother entertained for the younger. There had been many quarrels and disputes between them from their boyhood upwards. Frank told me the other day you had been talking about the extraordinary power the Italian, and especially the native of Southern Italy, has of following out one design through all obstacles and difficulties, silently and secretly, for years. If they possess this tenacity of character in the search for wealth, I am afraid they have it equally in questions of revenge. And for some reason or other this had been the sentiment of Conte Falcone for his brother, Don Carlo. One day Don Carlo was found stabbed through the heart, and suspicion immediately fell on Conte Falcone. He was arrested, but the trial was a long one, and some months were passed in collecting evidence. At length he was convicted, and from the moment of his condemnation made no attempt to deny his guilt. At that time the prison at Potenza, where he was to await his execution, was under the direction of a Jesuit father, whose efforts were ceaseless for the good of the unfortunate criminals under his charge.

“Naturally, Conte Falcone was a special object of care and anxiety, from the enormity of his crime, and from the fact that his position and circumstances are generally in themselves a guarantee against offences of so deep a dye.

“No efforts were wanting on the part of the Jesuit priest. He was with his prisoner day and night, endeavoring to bring him to a true repentance of his sin against God and against humanity. And he succeeded. He found the count from the first overwhelmed with remorse, and his object was to prevent this remorse degenerating into despair, and thus excluding the light of faith. Happily, Conte Falcone, grievously as he had offended against the laws of God, had never given place to rationalistic or scoffing doubts. It needed but to transform the awful bitterness of human remorse into the tenderness of perfect contrition; and this great work in the culprit’s soul was happily accomplished in time to give him courage to bear the dreadful intelligence that all efforts made at the Court of Appeal to get the sentence commuted had entirely failed. This was an unusual and remarkable fact, for capital punishment is very rarely carried out in Italy; many would tell you not sufficiently for the protection of society. Probably in this case the judges were urged to unusual severity by the position of the criminal, lest it should appear that, being a nobleman, he was less severely dealt with than a common man might have been. Moreover, it was not forgotten that this was the third time one of his unfortunate family had taken the life of a relation, and it was thought necessary an example should be made. The priest accordingly announced to him that his fate was sealed, and that the next morning he must proceed on the terrible journey which was to be his last.

“In the kingdom of Naples, as well as in some other parts of Italy, it is the law that the execution of a criminal should take place on or near the spot where the deed was done.”

“What a terrible law of retribution!” exclaimed Mary.

“Yes, and one strictly in conformity with many passages of the Holy Scriptures, and with the Biblical spirit generally.”

“Has it not been supposed, father,” asked Frank, “that possibly after death the souls in purgatory, as also the lost, suffer for their errors there where they were guilty of them?”

“It is a common opinion, and it goes far towards explaining the accounts of strange noises and spectral forms in places where it is known there has been a murder. The very sound of the fatal blow is repeated through the hours of the night, as though the disembodied spirit were condemned for ever to re‐enact the semblance of that crime which has grown into one idea, one all‐absorbing memory of the past. The soul becomes, as it were, the personification and essence of its fatal crime.”

“What a fearful verification of the worm that dieth not!” said Mary.

“But surely,” I exclaimed, “we may have softer and happier feelings about the souls in purgatory?”

“Of course we may,” replied the father, almost smiling at my look of horror and anxiety. “If they frequent the scenes of their past, it is not to inspire us with fear; for of that dreadful passion they are now themselves no longer capable, the blessed security of their future annihilating all touch of apprehension. If they reappear to the living, it is either to remedy some evil or to solicit our prayers. I never could understand the terror people have of what they call ghosts.”

“It would be strange indeed,” said Mary, “not to wish to see again those we have loved and lost, even their disembodied souls.”

“And yet it is not lawful to desire it with ardor or to entreat for it; because it is outside the bounds of God’s usual dealings with his creatures to permit the dead to revisit the living, or rather to reappear to them; for I believe they revisit us constantly, and probably mostly dwell amongst us, unseen and, alas! generally forgotten.”

“Oh! no, not forgotten, dear father,” said Mary, the tears filling her eyes.

“Not forgotten by such as you, _figlia mia_.(150) But we have entered on a subject which might keep us discussing till midnight. I go back to my poor penitent.”

“Was he your penitent from the first, father? Were you the director of the prison?”

“You have robbed me of my disguise, _cara figlia_.(151) I meant to have told you a story, but not to talk of myself. However, it does not matter, and I will lay aside all disguise. The journey the unhappy count had to make to his native place was perhaps the most terrible part of his punishment. But I had the satisfaction of seeing him receive the announcement with the greatest resignation, once more offering it as an atonement for his crime. As he was a man of considerable refinement and education, his resignation arose from no lack of power to appreciate the dreadful contrast between his present position on returning to his home and that which he had once filled. It would be impossible to put into words what he felt on arriving to meet an ignominious death at the place where he had been the great man and the most influential person. Early in the morning of the dreadful day on which we began our long journey he was led out of the prison, and mounted on an ass—such being the law in that part of Italy. The slow paces of the beast added considerably to the torture of the count’s feelings, it being impossible to hasten a progress every hour of which seemed an age. He had made his general confession to me before that fatal morning, and constantly on the road he would turn to me for a word of consolation and encouragement, or to renew his frequent acts of contrition. I need hardly say I never left his side for a moment. Poor fellow! what an agony the whole journey was to him, and, from sympathy, hardly less so to me; for he was bound hand and foot, and the animal was led by one of the guards, the others following and surrounding him on horseback. You know enough of us Italians to be aware that, physically and morally, we are more sensitively constituted than any other European nation. Our feelings are extraordinarily keen, and our imaginative powers excessive; and these two qualities combine to give us a most intense love of life. All the incidents of our journey, which occupied the entire day, must have been, and indeed I can bear testimony that they were, the perfection of anguish to the count, such as seldom can fall to the lot of any man, taking his whole life together. The sun poured its scorching rays on his uncovered head; he, being bound, could not in any way help himself; and several times he turned so faint that the guards had to fetch water to revive him. I obtained permission at last for his poor head to be covered—all the more so as I apprehended a sun‐stroke. I held the cup for him to drink from, and sometimes supported him for a few seconds in my arms to relieve him as well as I could from the restraint of his painful position. It was nightfall when our awful and melancholy procession reached the prison of the count’s native town. His own château was not far distant! I had written to have a chapel prepared in the prison; and in that chapel, kneeling at the foot of the altar, he whom I had come to love as the very child of my soul spent the entire night. Naturally, his first thought on arriving was for his wife and his two little children. And he entreated to be allowed to see them once more. I was not then aware of what was the custom on such melancholy occasions, and I applied for permission to send for the countess and her children. But I found that they had been removed from their home by the order of the magistrates, and were already at a considerable distance. This had been done from motives of humanity, that the poor wife might not be almost within hearing of the dreadful event which was to take place on the morrow, or his children grow up with a full knowledge of their father’s fate. It was almost more than I myself could bear when I had to return to him in the prison, and tell him of the ill‐success of my request. It was the last drop of extreme bitterness. It was the vinegar and the gall; the absolute isolation from all that he had loved, the utter desolation of his human affections. A spasm of agony passed over his face; but the only words he spoke were, ‘The will of God be done.’ ”

“In the morning he again made his confession with the ardent contrition and fervor of a saint. He heard a Mass as preparation for his last communion. He received the Blessed Sacrament at the second Mass, and assisted at a third in thanksgiving.

“The dreadful moment was now at hand. The horrid black limbs of the fatal guillotine stood stark and rigid against the bright morning sky in the great public square of the town.

“Every church in the place was thronged with worshippers, praying and offering their communions for the salvation of the poor soul so soon to be wrenched from sweet life, and sent to its everlasting doom. The public square was also filled with spectators—a silent, awe‐struck throng, while occasionally a prayer would seem to quiver on the air from the suppressed voice of a hundred people.

“At length the count appeared, supported by the guards; for by that time he was in a very exhausted state. His last act was to press my hand in silence. It was the signal for me to give him the last absolution. I had just turned aside, hardly conscious myself from excess of feeling, when the fatal knife fell. A cry of horror ran through the crowd; and then immediately they dispersed, many of them repeating aloud the _De profundis_, as they retired to their homes.

“I always remember poor Falcone in my daily Mass; though I cannot say I think he is in any further need of prayers, but is, I hope, long since in a position to benefit me by his.”

“What is your opinion, father,” asked Mary, “of public executions?”

“In the present state of feeling in Italy they are beneficial rather than otherwise. I attended the execution of two soldiers a few years ago at Terracina. The whole town was crowding to the church the evening before, and at an early hour on the day itself, to pray for the poor men. It was like the general communion at the close of a mission; and those who actually witnessed the execution seemed to do so with no other object than to assist the poor criminals by their prayers. Many of the women were on their knees in the public place. And I do not believe but that such a fervor of devotion had a beneficial effect upon all. It is, or at least it was, the same thing in Rome. But where, as in London and Paris, that idea of intercessory prayer has died out with the faith of which it forms a part, and the vilest rabble collects from a brutal curiosity to see a man hung or guillotined, then I am convinced that public executions are demoralizing, and tend to increase the crimes they are meant to repress.”

“All I know is,” said Frank, suddenly starting up, “if a fellow could only have the good‐luck to be hung in the presence of a large Italian crowd, I think he would have a better chance of going straight to heaven than by any other death. I think I should like to go in for that sort of thing myself.”

“O Frank! what do you mean?”

“Why, this is what I mean: If you have a long illness, you get weak in mind and in the power of volition, as well as weak in body. I know, if I have only a headache, how difficult it is to say my prayers. Fancy, then, what it must be through a long, painful illness. Whereas, if you are going to be hung, you have all your faculties about you; you are in no doubt of when you are going to die; the time is fixed to the minute. You have made your last confession; and I can imagine being able then to make such an act of perfect contrition, with all the forces of one’s mind and soul, that would land one safe past the realms of purgatory. I often feel as if it would be my only chance, and not a bad one, either.”

Padre Cataldo looked amused. Elizabeth did not appear quite to like it, and I overheard her say to him: “I think you might manage to end an honorable life in a more honorable way, and secure heaven all the same.” I thought I heard something in reply about “with your help and your example”; but I did not listen, as I wanted to induce Padre Cataldo to tell us about his wonderful escape during the revolution of 1860. I said something to him about it; but he turned it off, and Mary whispered to me that he never liked to talk about it, but that Don Emidio knew all about it, and we could ask him to tell us the next time we met. Padre Cataldo now took leave, Frank accompanying him back, and promising to return for the Vernons later.

As soon as they had left, Ida told us that all their troubles and anxieties in reference to the Casinelli and the chapel bell had been renewed. There had been an interregnum of comparative peace, and we had entertained the hope that all was likely to go on quietly. But it turned out that one of the sisters some days previously had called on Mrs. Vernon and her daughters to explain that the bell ringing for Mass was such a cause of annoyance to the other lodgers that she really must request that it should be entirely given up. Of course Mrs. Vernon refused. The chapel had been conceded to them; Mass was said there daily by the express permission of the cardinal archbishop, and was of the greatest benefit to the neighborhood; and she and her daughters absolutely declined to sanction such an insult to religion. Signorina Casinelli proposed that the bell should be hung somewhere in the garden at a considerable distance. But this also was refused. It was not rung at an early hour. It was not a large bell, and it was absurd to have the chapel in one place, and the chapel bell an eighth of a mile away, to say nothing of the trouble of sending some one to ring it. Signorina Casinelli left the house in high dudgeon; and the next day she waylaid Padre Cataldo, as he was returning through the garden from visiting the sick. She flew into a violent rage the moment she saw him, and told him that, rather than offend their other tenants, they would, the house being their property, shut up the chapel entirely.

Unfortunately, no written agreement respecting the use of the chapel existed between the Vernons and the Casinelli; and it had never entered any one’s head that they could be guilty of such a transaction. The threat was, however, only too well carried out. That same evening the bell was cut down and carried away. The Vernons learnt from the _vignaiuoli_ in their neighborhood that the Casinelli had had some difficulty in finding any workmen who would undertake the job. They had first sent for a mason in their own employ; but he had absolutely refused to have anything to do with a work which he considered as sacrilegious; and turning to the _padrona_, the eldest sister, he exclaimed, “Judas also sold his Master for money, but I will have nothing to do with conduct which resembles his. You may manage your own affairs in your own way.”

The following Saturday they completed their evil work by literally doing as they threatened. A message was sent to the Vernons to warn them that they had better take out of the chapel anything therein which belonged to them without loss of time, as that night it was to be locked and the keys withdrawn.

It was a sad office indeed for the Vernons to have to strip the little chapel of all its ornaments, the work of their hands and their hearts. They did it in silence, and in silence they bore the heavy trial; for had they allowed themselves any expressions which would have served as a cry for the peasantry around, it would have been difficult to restrain the grief and indignation of these poor people at finding themselves deprived of their Mass and of the instructions of a priest whom they all loved as a father. Ida’s delicate health made it very difficult for her to walk to any church up the high hill at the foot of which Casinelli is situated. Padre Cataldo had to go elsewhere to say his Mass, to the great inconvenience of himself and others. But that was as nothing compared to the grief of seeing all his little flock dispersed.

Signore Casinelli informed his tenant, in the presence of several persons, that henceforth he might consider himself master of the situation. And so he has remained. But the Casinelli have never since been able to command the slightest respect from the _vignaiuoli_ and peasantry of the neighborhood. They have lost all prestige. And long before these pages see the light the Vernons will have left Casinelli to establish themselves in one of the many villas whose doors were open to them from that moment. All in the neighborhood wanted to let their apartments to them and Padre Cataldo; and if anything could console them for all they had had to sacrifice, it might be the amount of sympathy and respect which met them on all sides and from all classes; while the incident, far from diminishing Padre Cataldo’s field of usefulness, seemed to have opened out fresh spheres for him to work in, and to have extended his influence far and wide.

The garden in which our villa of R—— R—— stood led by steps and winding paths to a tiny bay and to a long series of rocks and large natural caves. There was more than one bath, fed by the fresh sea‐water, in whose limpid depths we not unfrequently saw brilliant sea‐anemones, and even small fish which sometimes forced their way through to the openings left in an artificial dike to supply the bath with water. Here and there a wooden bridge was thrown over some part where the water broke the communication from one cave to another. The views from the wide, arched openings of the caves were very lovely; Naples and the bay on one side, and the flower‐ clad, precipitous rocks of the coast of Posilippo on the other. At night the fishermen’s boats which had been moored in these caves, and in others like them, came gliding out with a lighted torch at the prow. And all through the night many of them might be seen, with the black figures of two or three fishermen dimly distinguished from time to time; though more generally all that can be seen is the dark, shadowy form of the boat and the flaring torch, intended to attract the unwary fish into the net.

I should have liked the caves better had they not been disfigured by the stuffed, gaunt forms of a hippopotamus and some alligators and similar monsters, which were placed in all sorts of unexpected places, and seemed to meet you round the corner with gaping jaws. These caves had formed part of a public place of resort some years ago, but were now deserted and forgotten, with all the monsters rapidly falling into dusty decay.

We had been for some time at the villa before my curiosity had ever led me to explore this strange place. When I did so, it was in company with Don Emidio. But as I protested that I did not like crocodiles and hippopotami, he suggested that we should climb the rock outside the cave to the pretty little pink and green kiosk which crowned it, and which commanded a lovely view from where it stood embedded in aloes and cacti, opuntias and zoccas, besides many varieties of climbing plants. Nothing could be prettier than the winding paths, protected on one side by a rustic fence, while every cranny in the rock on the other side bore some tuft of blossom or afforded roothold for the wild tresses of some flowering creeper.

Mary and Frank had remained in the lower garden, while we wandered into every nook and corner, and finally sat down to rest inside the kiosk, which, with windows all round, presented to us a wide and lovely scene.

It was here I consented to become Don Emidio’s wife.

That effected, no matter how or in what words—for those things seldom read wisely—I suggested that we should rejoin Mary and Frank. Don Emidio took the latter by the arm, and walked with him a little way apart. I remained silent, sitting at Mary’s feet. When Don Emidio joined us, it was without Frank. I asked where he was. “Gone down to Casinelli,” was the reply. I knew why. He was determined to have his fate also decided that same day, that same hour. I had no doubts for him. I knew that Elizabeth would consent; and I felt partly glad, and partly saddened at the thought that our life, hitherto so united and bound up in each other, was about to divide and separate, each following his or her own destiny, and weaving a new web of life’s joys and sorrows. Don Emidio left us soon. But long after, I saw him leaning over the parapet of the road, waiting for Frank to return from Casinelli, that he might learn whether his wishes also were to be crowned with success. I could see the meeting from my window, as the tall figures of the two friends stood dark against the deep blue of an Italian starlight night. I could have no doubt of the nature of the intelligence conveyed by Frank to his friend; for, to my horror, Don Emidio threw his arms around him and kissed him, as Italians do. Poor Frank! thought I, how will he put up with such an un‐English proceeding? No doubt it had happened to Frank before; for he did not, so far as I could judge at that distance, start with astonishment. But it set me thinking about my future husband’s foreign ways. And the next morning, when Frank and I had talked over the more serious questions in our affairs, I found myself drifting into that part of the matter. “I wonder, Frank, if I shall ever get quite reconciled to his Italian customs, so as either not to notice, or to prefer them?”

“It is to be hoped so, since he will be your husband. But what do you mean in particular?”

“Why, you know he will call me Miss Jane; any one else would say Miss Hamilton.”

“That is an evil which is already at an end. No doubt for the future he will call you simply Jane, and speak of you a short time hence as la Contessa Gandolfi.”

“Then I wish he would not embrace you, Frank.” Frank laughed aloud.

“He would be hurt if I repulsed him. They all do it. He will soon see that in England it is not the custom, and then he will give it up—at least while there.”

“Another thing is, I do not like his wearing a large ring—though I own it is a handsome one—on his forefinger. We think that vulgar in England.”

“And it does not happen to be vulgar here; that is all about it, my dear Jane. I am afraid I cannot help you in that matter. But possibly in time you will succeed in bringing him round to your views; though I doubt your ever being able to break him of occasionally transferring that ring from his finger to his thumb whenever he is particularly anxious to remember something. When you see his palazzo in Rome, you will find that he possesses a beautiful portrait, by Vandyke, of an ancestor on his mother’s side. That very ring is on the forefinger of the portrait. Emidio is the living image of that picture. And you can hardly blame a man for carrying out a likeness he has such reason to be proud of.”

“There is one other thing, Frank, which strikes me as odd. If he is sitting in the arm‐chair when Mary or I come into the room (and you know we are not rich in arm‐chairs here), he never gives either of us that chair, but fetches us another, and goes back to the arm‐chair himself.”

“Jane, you are a little fool. Do you not know that in Italy, at least in the south, it is the height of ill‐breeding to offer any one the chair you have just occupied yourself? A cool seat is always a desideratum in this climate, even though it may be a less luxurious one.”

“Shall I ever, do you think, be able to take back to England with me a husband with such a name as Emidio? What a pity he was not christened Paul, or Stephen, or even Anthony! But Emidio!” By this time we were both laughing—Frank at me, I at myself.

“You need never call him Emidio in public. We call him so because, when we have been travelling about Italy alone together, we found it convenient to drop his title. But you know he is il Conte Gandolfi. His mother was the only child of a noble Roman family, and consequently a great heiress. She married a Neapolitan Conte Gandolfi; and that is how it happens that with a Neapolitan name his chief residence is in Rome, in the palazzo that belonged to his mother. His father was not a man of very considerable fortune, and his only property here is his villa at Capo di Monte, where he spends the summer. A nobler heart and a finer nature I never saw. There is the simplicity of a child, the honor of a true‐born gentleman, the delicacy of a woman, the courage of a hero, and the piety of a saint.”

The tears stood in my eyes; and taking dear Frank’s hand in mine, I said, “Thank you, dear old fellow, for saying that. And, thank God, you too have drawn a prize!”

A Discussion With An Infidel.

IV. Immortality Of Matter.

_Reader._ And now, doctor, what other argument do you allege against creation?

_Büchner._ The immortality of matter, and the immortality of force.

_Reader._ The immortality of matter?

_Büchner._ Yes, sir. “Matter is immortal, indestructible. There is not an atom in the universe which can be lost. We cannot, even in thought, remove or add an atom without admitting that the world would thereby be disturbed, and the laws of gravitation and the equilibrium of matter interfered with. It is the great merit of modern chemistry to have proved in the most convincing manner that the uninterrupted changes of matter which we daily witness, the origin and decay of organic and inorganic forms and tissues, do not arise, as was hitherto believed, from new materials, but that this change consists in nothing else but the constant and continuous metamorphosis of the same elementary principles, the quantity and quality of which ever are, and ever remain, the same” (p. 9). “The atoms are in themselves unchangeable and indestructible; to‐day in this, tomorrow in another form, they present by the variety of their combinations the innumerable forms in which matter appears to our senses. The number of atoms in any element remains, on the whole, the same; not a single particle is formed anew; nor can it, when formed, disappear from existence” (p. 11).

_Reader._ Do you say in the same breath that no particle of matter can be formed anew, and that, _when formed_, it cannot disappear? When is it formed, if it cannot be formed at all?

_Büchner._ The phrase may be incorrect, but the idea is sound, and the argument conclusive.

_Reader._ Poor doctor! the idea is as inconsistent as the phrase is incorrect; and the argument is not worthy of the name. Let us admit that matter, elements, and atoms have been observed to remain always and everywhere the same. Does it follow that matter, elements, and atoms are indestructible? By no means; it only follows that, be they destructible or not, they have not been actually destroyed. You say that by the destruction or addition of an atom “the world would be disturbed.” Let it be disturbed; what then?

_Büchner._ Then the laws of gravitation and the equilibrium of matter would be interfered with; which cannot be admitted. The laws of nature are unchangeable. What has been constantly true for the past must be true for ever.

_Reader._ You are utterly mistaken, doctor. The world may be disturbed by the creation or the annihilation of matter without the laws of nature being interfered with. I admit that the laws of nature are unchangeable; they have been true for the past, and they will be true for ever. But what is the object of these laws? Nothing but the mode of production of the phenomena of the material world. Hence you have a law of gravitation, a law of propagation of sound, a law of impact, a law of reflection and of refraction, and generally laws of motion, but you have no law of _existence_ and no law of _substance_. Whence it is clear that all your laws of nature would remain exactly the same whether any new portion of matter were brought into being or any portion of existing matter annihilated. Suppose that your own body were annihilated; would any law of nature be upset? Would the sun cease to illuminate the earth? Would the earth cease to revolve round its axis or to attract bodies? Would the ocean cease rolling its waves to the shore? Would fire cease to burn? In one word, would any law of statics or of dynamics cease to be true?

Nor can you decline this supposition by saying that annihilation itself would be against the laws of nature. For all your laws of nature, as I have just remarked, regard the movements, and not the substance, of the material world. Your laws suppose the existence of matter in the same manner as civil laws suppose the existence of civil society; and as these latter are not modified by an increase or a decrease in the number of the individuals subject to them, so neither would the former be modified by any increase or decrease in the number of material elements. There would be, of course, a change in the phenomena themselves, because the execution of the laws would be carried on suitably to the new condition of the case; but the laws would remain the same. Consequently any amount of matter could be annihilated without the least change in the laws of nature. Let the moon be annihilated; the ebb and flow of the ocean will be altered, but the laws of motion will remain the same; for the ebbing and flowing of the waters will still be proportional to the action of the disturbing causes. Let a stone be annihilated in the act of its falling to the ground; the law of attraction will remain unaltered, as it will still be true that every falling body must acquire, under gravitation, a uniformly increasing velocity. Hence the unchangeableness of natural laws cannot be alleged as a proof of the indestructibility of matter; and your argument is worthless. The utmost you can be allowed to assume is that matter, whether destructible or not, has hitherto continued to exist, and no particle of it has ever been annihilated.

This last assertion, however, is admitted by natural philosophers, not because there is any scientific proof of it, but simply because science has no grounds for denying it. Science has no means of ascertaining, for instance, whether any remote star has been annihilated, or any new star created, in the last thousand years; and if the common belief is that no new matter has been created, and no portion of matter annihilated, we owe it, not to science, but to the teaching of the Bible, which represents the work of creation as long ago completed, and the conservation of all created substances as the effect of design. But you, who laugh at revelation, and pretend to substantiate all your assertions by facts, have no right to assume that no matter has ever been annihilated. Hence not only are you unable to show that matter is indestructible, but you cannot even maintain that no particle of matter has ever been destroyed.

But I will no longer insist on this point. I admit that no atom of matter can ever be lost to the world _by natural processes_. My reason is that the natural actions of bodies, whether physical or chemical, tend merely to the production, modification, or neutralization of movement, and that no amount of change in the movement of an atom can cause the atom to vanish. This is not, however, a discovery of modern chemistry, as you seem to believe. The scholastic philosophers had not the fortune to know modern chemistry; yet they never believed that new compounds were made of new materials, though you recklessly assert that “it was hitherto believed”; but they always uniformly taught that matter was ingenerable and incorruptible. There was therefore scarcely any need of modern chemistry to teach us that no portion of matter can be lost by natural processes. Yet this is not the real question. What we want to know is whether an atom, or any number of atoms, has a necessary existence and cannot be annihilated by God. This is your assumption; and this is what you are unable to show. Your argument is, in fact, nothing but a vicious circle. You say: “There is no God; and therefore matter cannot be annihilated”; and at the same time you say: “Matter cannot be annihilated; and therefore there is no God.” This is, in reality, the covert drift of your argumentation, when from the assumed indestructibility of matter you conclude, first, that matter could not have been created, and, further, that the existence of a Creator is a gratuitous hypothesis. On the other hand, you cannot make good your assertion that matter is indestructible without first denying the existence of a Creator. Such is your nice logic in what you probably consider to be one of your best arguments.

And let me here make a passing remark on the word “immortality,” which you have chosen to designate the pretended indestructibility of matter. Immortality is not simply “existence without end,” but “life without end.” Hence living beings alone can be immortal. Do you assume, then, that a grain of dust or an atom of matter is a living being? If you say _yes_, where are the facts that will lend a support to such an unscientific doctrine? If you say _no_, then the immortality of your matter is nothing indeed but a new form of what you would style “philosophical charlatanism.”

To conclude: the indestructibility of matter is a ridiculous invention of ignorant empiricists, who know neither what matter is nor what is philosophical reasoning. They make, indeed, a great deal of noise with their scientific publications; but their ephemeral celebrity is due to an organized system of mutual laudation and to Masonic support, as you know. Let only twenty years pass, and you may be sure that our children will laugh at your celebrities: and if your _Force and Matter_ is to reach them, they will laugh at you too. Common sense cannot slumber for ever; and when it awakes, then will all your infidel scribes be pronounced designing knaves.

_Büchner._ I thought you would never end, sir; but, long as your answer has been, it has failed to convince me. The force of my argument lies in this: that what can have an end must have had a beginning. If, therefore, matter is not indestructible, it must have had a beginning.

_Reader._ Certainly.

_Büchner._ But a beginning of matter is inconceivable. For how could matter come into existence?

_Reader._ By creation out of nothing.

_Büchner._ This is what I deny. For out of nothing nothing can arise. This is an axiom. Hence “never can an atom arise anew or disappear; it can only change its combinations.... Matter must have existed from eternity, and must last for ever” (p. 12).

_Reader._ I am not in the least surprised to hear that my long talk did not convince you. It is always difficult to convince a man against his will. My object, however, was not to give you a positive demonstration of the fact of creation, but only to show that the reasons which you were parading against creation amount to nothing. Of this I hope I have not failed to convince you. But now you come forward with a new argument, which indeed is very old, consisting in a pretended axiom, that out of nothing nothing can arise. Suppose, doctor, that I deny your axiom. How would you show that I deny a truth?

_Büchner._ “How can any one deny the axiom that out of nothing nothing can arise?” (p. 12).

_Reader._ You must know, doctor, that what you assume to be an old axiom is only an old error. In fact, why do you say that out of nothing nothing can arise? Simply because natural energies can do nothing without pre‐ existing materials. Hence your argument amounts to this. “Natural energies never make anything out of nothing; therefore out of nothing nothing can be made.” That this conclusion is a great blunder I need not prove, I presume, as logic teaches that no conclusion can be more general than its premises. Where is, then, the ground of your pretended axiom?

Nor can you reply that the natural energies are the only energies known to us, and that, if these cannot make anything out of nothing, the axiom is unexceptionably true. This would be to assume what you are bound to prove, to wit, that there is no power above the natural forces; and to assume this is what logicians call _Petitio principii_. On the other hand, you cannot maintain that such natural forces are the only ones we know; for you cannot limit the range of human knowledge within the narrow sphere of mere empiricism without denying human reason.

_Büchner._ We have no notion of supersensible forces.

_Reader._ You talk without reflection, doctor. If you have no such a notion, what is it, then, that compels you to admit any demonstrated truth? Is it attraction, heat, electricity, or any of your physical or chemical forces? No; it is the force of demonstration, it is the force of truth. This is no vain theory; I appeal to your own experience. Your intellect is obliged to yield to the force of evidence and demonstration just as inevitably as the pendulum is obliged to yield to the force of gravitation. And since a real effect requires a real cause, hence whatever thus really compels your intellect to yield must have a real power, and that evidently supersensible.

But reverting to your pretended axiom, I have yet to remark that, strictly speaking, it does not even hold in the case of natural causes; in other terms, I say that nothing is ever produced by natural causes except out of nothing. Of course no tailor ever made a coat without cloth, and no carpenter ever built a ship without pre‐existing materials. This I admit; but if you closely examine the point, you will see that to make a coat or a ship is not _to produce_ it, and that the action of the tailor and the carpenter wholly consists in modifying and arranging the materials so as to give them a form. It is, therefore, this _form_ alone that is produced. Now, clearly, this form, before its production, was nothing; for it had no existence. And therefore the work of the tailor or the carpenter is a production of something out of nothing.(152) And thus either you must deny that anything is ever produced, or you must give up your axiom that nothing can be produced out of nothing.

_Büchner._ I cannot give up my axiom without inconsistency. I will rather deny that anything is ever really produced. In fact, “Those are children, or persons with a narrow sphere of vision, says Empedocles, who imagine that anything arises that has not existed before, or that anything can entirely die and perish” (p. 15).

_Reader._ These are empty words.

_Büchner._ On the other hand, “the immortality of matter is now a fact scientifically established, and can no longer be denied” (p. 13).

_Reader._ Indeed?

_Büchner._ Yes; “Its actual proof is given by our scales and retorts” (p. 13).

_Reader._ I thought I had already shown that your scales and retorts are incapable of giving such a proof.

_Büchner._ “Sebastian Frank, a German who lived in 1528, says: Matter was in the beginning in God, and is on that account eternal and infinite. The earth and everything created may pass away, but we cannot say that that will perish out of which matter is created. The substance remains for ever” (p. 14).

_Reader._ Do you endorse these words?

_Büchner._ Certainly.

_Reader._ Then you catch yourself in your own trap. For if matter is created, as your German writer says, surely there is a Creator.

_Büchner._ But if matter was in the beginning in God, and was eternal, it is plain that matter could not be created.

_Reader._ Perfectly true. And therefore, since matter, according to your German authority, has been created, surely matter was not in the beginning in God. But, after all, can you endorse Frank’s words without admitting a God? And can you admit a God and a Creator while fighting against creation and the existence of God? Be honest, doctor, and confess that bad indeed must a cause be which cannot be maintained but by clumsy sophistry and shameful contradiction.

V. Immortality Of Force.

_Reader._ In your theory, doctor, force is immortal. This I cannot understand. Would you tell me how you come to such a conclusion?

_Büchner._ “Indestructible, imperishable, and immortal as matter is also its immanent force. Intimately united to matter, force revolves in the same never‐ending cycle, and emerges from any form in the same quantity as it entered. If it be an undoubted fact that matter can neither be produced nor destroyed, but merely transformed, then it must also be assumed as an established principle that there is not a single case in which force can be produced out of, or pass into, nothing; or, in other words, can be born or annihilated. In all cases where force is manifested it may be reduced to its sources; that is to say, it can be ascertained from what other forces a definite amount of force has been obtained, either directly or by conversion. This convertibility is not arbitrary, but takes place according to definite equivalents, so that not the smallest quantity of force can be lost” (p. 16).

_Reader._ How do you account for this theory?