Chapter XXIV: Part VI: They Sang (20)

That part of Catholic doctrine which was endangered and indirectly subverted by ontologism is the one which relates to the distinction between nature and grace, the rational knowledge of God attainable by man in this life, and the immediate intuition of God enjoyed by the blessed in heaven. Ontologism destroys the real distinction between the natural and the supernatural orders, between the abstractive vision of God by reason and faith, and the intuitive vision of God without any medium, and face to face. It is true that ontologists have never taught that man has, or can have, a clear vision of the divine essence, like that of the blessed, by his unaided natural powers. This is a heresy condemned by the General Council of Vienne. Moreover, it would be too absurd for any sane person to maintain that such a vision is congenital and possessed by all men from the first instant of creation. Nor would any one who maintains that the idea of God is impressed on the soul at its creation be so extravagant as to assert that the clear and distinct conception of God which can be obtained by reason and faith is present to the minds of all men from their birth. Ontologists are careful to state that there is a difference between the immediate cognition of God in this life and that of the life to come. And all who maintain any kind of ideal cognition which is congenital or innate, understand by this something which exists unconsciously in the soul until its powers are developed. The object is there, facing the intellect, but the intellect has its eyes closed, and cannot perceive it. When it perceives it, it is first obscurely, then clearly, then more or less distinctly. Its congenital cognition is an unconscious, undeveloped act. But all the principles of conscious, developed cognition are in that act, and are only evolved by the operation of the senses and the intellectual faculties. The error condemned is the assertion that this cognition has God in his intelligibility as real and necessary being as its _immediate_ object. And though it is not formally a heresy, since it does not assert that the immediate cognition of God is identical with the beatific vision, or deny the necessity of the light of glory to make the soul capable of the beatific vision, it is erroneous, inasmuch as it removes that which really makes the essential difference of the vision of the blessed, as distinct from the natural cognition of any created intelligence. This difference is defined by Benedict XIV., in the Const. _Benedictus Deus_, to be that the blessed see God “without the mediation of anything created which presents itself as the object seen”—_nulla mediante creaturâ in ratione objecti visi se habente_. Every other cognition of God must therefore have some created object of intellectual vision as an intermediary between the intellect and God—that is, must be mediate and not immediate cognition. An immediate cognition, however obscure and imperfect, must therefore be essentially the same with the clear, beatific intuition of the essence of God, and capable of being expanded, extended, developed, increased, made more penetrating or powerful, without being essentially changed, until it equals or surpasses the intuition of the highest angel in heaven. The light of faith or the light of glory can be therefore only aids to the improvement of the human intellect in its own natural capacity and activity—as if one should see the stars more plainly by a telescope, and afterwards receive a more perfect body with a visual organ superior to any telescope that was ever made.

A more elaborate similitude will make the difference of immediate and mediate cognition of God more plain. Let us suppose a barbarian lying asleep on the shore of his lonely island in the Pacific, while a large ship, the first which has ever approached it, has just come within the most distant range of vision. There is an object, then on his horizon, which he has the power to see, but does not perceive until he awakes. He perceives it at first as a very small and dimly‐seen object—as _something_, he knows not what. It may be a cloud, a bird, a wave sparkling in the sun, a canoe. It is a large man‐of‐war which is the real object perceived, but he does not know that it is a ship, or know its contents, or even know what a ship is. This is an obscure perception. By‐ and‐by he can see that it is not a cloud, or bird, or canoe, but a large, moving structure, whose principal parts are visible to him. This is a clear perception. When it has anchored, he has been taken on board, has seen its crew and armament, its cabins and hold, and has learned what is its purpose and the utility of its principal parts, he has a distinct conception. After he has learned the language of the sailors, and has been instructed to a greater or less extent, he acquires a more adequate and perfect knowledge, like that which the sailors themselves possess; he joins the crew, and becomes an expert seaman, and finds himself to have become much superior in knowledge and happiness to what he was before the ship came to his island.

Let us also suppose that a bottle is washed ashore at another island, and picked up by a native. When he opens it, he finds in it a drawing representing a large ship, and a paper containing particular information about the ship and its crew. This bottle had been thrown overboard after the ship had sprung a leak in mid‐ocean, and was about to founder. After the bottle has been found by the native, Europeans arrive at the island, by whom the papers are examined, and their contents explained to the native, who learns also from the explanation of the drawing to understand what the ship is, its use, construction, parts, etc. He thus gains substantially the same knowledge of that ship and its crew with that which the other native gained about the other ship, though in a different way, without ever seeing the ship itself, but only an image of it. One has immediate, the other mediate cognition. One sees the object in itself, the other sees it in something else. In the first case the native saw something which was a ship, but while it was distant it was not visible as a ship, only as an object. Afterwards it was visible in its outward shape and appearance as a ship, in clear, unmistakable contrast with every different object, but not distinctly understood or closely inspected, or made the principal object of the occupation, the attachment, the enjoyment, of the native—in a word, the home and centre of his chief earthly good. When he first saw something in the distance, he really saw the ship, and in that vision was virtually contained all that he afterwards discovered in respect to it; whereas, the other native never saw the other ship, and never could see it by means of drawings or verbal descriptions, although he could learn that it was a ship, and what ship it was, where it sailed from, who sailed it, and when and where it foundered.

The above comparison is not perfect, since every comparison must limp at least a little; but we think it is sufficient as an illustration of the process by which the human intellect attains to the knowledge of God and the beatific vision of God, according to ontologism as differing from the doctrine of sound Catholic theology. According to ontologism, God presents himself to the intellect, when he creates it, as its immediate Object, objective Idea, or intelligible Term. So soon as it is capable of apprehending eternal verities, it apprehends that which is God, although not yet knowing explicitly that what it apprehends is God—that is, the one, living, most perfect Being who is the creator and sovereign lord of all things. By another step it acquires a clear conception of God, and makes the judgment that God is, and that he is eternal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent. This judgment is an evolution from that cognition which existed at the beginning as a habit into an explicit act, as the explicit act of faith is deduced from the habit of faith given to the infant by baptism. That God is, is known by what he is—that is, by his essence, which is seen in the eternal verities or divine ideas as they are in reality, not distinguishable from the divine substance. Faith gives an obscure perception of the interior mysteries of the divine substance which are beyond the ken of the intellect unaided by revelation, or, in other words, are superintelligible verities; and the light of glory increases the power of intellectual vision so that it sees clearly and distinctly the interior essence of God, which completes the beatification of the soul.

In this place we may cite the third of the seven condemned propositions, which expresses the afore‐mentioned theory, as taken in connection with the fifth. This third proposition is: “Universals, objectively considered, _a parte rei_, are not really distinguishable from God”; and the fifth: “All other ideas are only modifications of the idea in which God is intellectively perceived as simply being—_tamquam ens simpliciter intelligitur_.” Universals are general ideas, each one of which is capable of being predicated of a multitude of subjects. The logical universals are five—genus, species, differentia, attribute, accident. The ten categories of Aristotle include all the supreme genera, though some maintain that a better division may be made. The transcendental ideas are those which transcend all generic classification, because they may be predicated of every genus and all its inferiors. They are the ideas of being, unity, the good, the true, the beautiful. They belong, therefore, to the universals, although predicated in analogous and not identical senses of the diverse genera and their inferior subjects. Take the supreme genus substance, as an instance, and follow it down to man—substance, corporeal substance, organized substance, animal, rational animal, _i.e._, man. His proximate genus is animal, his differentia rationality, which constitute the species man. The concrete reality of the universals, substance, etc., terminating in the species which is rational animal is found only in individual men. The direct universals, genus, species, differentia, exist, _a parte rei_, in each individual of the human species. Each man is a substance, corporeal, organized, animal, rational, and these universals can be predicated of him as their subject. The transcendental predicates, also, are connected with individual men as their subject. Individual men have being, unity, verity, goodness, beauty. But these may be predicated in senses which are only analogous to each other of the composite essence, of its distinct parts, soul and body, of the attributes or essential qualities of man, and of the accidents of individual men. For instance, the human essence is essentially good; the soul and body are good each in its own order; rationality is good; learning, valor, amiability, moral virtue, sanctity, are good; but there is analogy only, not identity, in these various kinds of good. The same is true of being. It is absurd, therefore, to speak, as Plato does, of a universal good, true, beautiful, or to speak of any universal idea, such as being, or a modification of being, as having any objective reality as a universal, except as a concept of the mind with a foundation in that which is or may be an actually existing thing. They are metaphysical essences, with their generic, specific, qualifying, and transcendental predicates. All the categories or supreme genera together make up what is called the nature of things, considered metaphysically; considered in their physical being in the sum of all concrete existences, they make up universal nature. The metaphysical essences are necessary, immutable, eternal, and potentially infinite. They are the eternal verities, the necessary truths, which copy the divine ideas upon nature or the universe, where God has impressed them, and are abstracted from the works of the Creator by the intellect of man. They are distinguishable from God, therefore they are not in the essence of God, or the divine ideas subsisting in the divine substance, and are not there seen by the intellect. This was long ago proved by philosophers and theologians. It is now declared by authority that it is unsafe thus to identify them with God, and thereby make him the immediate object of the intellect. The reason why it is unsafe is that it destroys the differentia which makes our rational cognition of God specifically distinct from the intuitive cognition of the blessed. There are also other dangers to faith and sound theology involved in the doctrines or tendencies of ontologism, which we have not space to notice.

Neither the absurdity nor the heterodoxy of ontologism is avoided by the system of Gioberti. The objection of Giobertians to pure ontologism, that it furnishes no dialectic principle uniting natural theology with other branches of special metaphysics and with ontology, is, indeed, well taken. But this only shows that pure ontologism is absurd and incoherent. It does not remove the absurdity of that which is common to pure ontologism and the ontologism of Gioberti. Neither does it remove its heterodoxy. Saying that we have immediate cognition of something which is not God does not make it more orthodox to say that we have immediate cognition of God. Moreover, Gioberti’s doctrine, as taught by himself, and understood by his European disciples and admirers, as well as by his acutest and most orthodox opponents, is far more heterodox than that of any other ontologist who is also a Catholic. Evidence has been furnished which has never been rebutted that Gioberti was a pantheist even before he published his _Introduction to Philosophy_. In a letter to Mazzini, written before that date, but only afterwards published from a motive of pique against him, he says explicitly that he is a pantheist after the manner of Giordano Bruno, though a Christian pantheist. What does this mean, unless it means that he had conceived a plan of combining pantheistic philosophy with the Catholic dogmas, as a part of his grand scheme of reconciling paganism with Christianity, and the European revolution with the Papacy? On this supposition he must either have acted the part of a deliberate liar and hypocrite—a baseness of which we believe him to have been incapable—or he must have intended, and in a subtile manner insinuated pantheism in the guise of his famous ideal formula, _Ens creat existentias_. In this case whatever may bear a pantheistic interpretation or seem to point to a pantheistic conclusion must be pantheistically interpreted, so far as the sense of the author is concerned. It is not strange, however, that many have understood him in a sense not directly heretical, or even, perhaps, quite compatible with Catholic faith. For his works are filled with passages which, taken in a Catholic sense, are gems of the purest and most precious sort. If the formula _Being creates existences_ be taken in the orthodox sense, as equivalent to _God creates the world_, it is obviously a directly contrary proposition to any one expressing pantheism. To make it bear a pantheistic sense, definitions of being, create, and existences must be sub‐introduced which vitiate its orthodox meaning. But, leaving aside this question, we have already proved that a Catholic must hold that the human intellect cannot have an immediate cognition of the first extreme of the formula, viz., that real and necessary Being which is God. Without this he cannot have an immediate cognition of the creative act, as the act of God, or of created things in their ideas, considered as the divine ideas themselves in the divine mind, and really identical with the divine essence. It is certain that the Holy See did not intend to condemn pantheism in the decree respecting the seven propositions, for it would never have affixed such a mild censure if it had so intended. Ontologism, whether couched in Gioberti’s formula or not, is condemned in that sense which is not pantheistic, and under every formula which includes an affirmation of the immediate cognition of God by the human intellect, as defined by M. Fabre in the passage quoted at the beginning of this article.

Before concluding we are obliged reluctantly to add a few words about a personal controversy with Dr. Brownson, with whom we always regret to have a difference respecting any matter which belongs to Catholic doctrine. We desire to explain, therefore, that we made no statement to the effect that the ontologism condemned by the Holy See had ever been formally and explicitly taught in philosophical articles, whether written by himself or any one else, in this magazine. Moreover, in the passage where his name is mentioned there is no direct statement that “_his own_ ontologism” falls under ecclesiastical censure. The utmost implied or asserted is that some educated men might think that some of his statements are “unsound,” philosophically or theologically, and demand a certain benignity of interpretation in order to escape the censure which a professed theologian would justly incur if he made such statements in a book written for school‐boys or young pupils. Dr. Brownson’s own defence of his doctrine, as based on his definition of intuition: “Intuition is the act of the object, not of the subject,” was cited as the precise distinction between his own doctrine and the one condemned, upon which the question of the theological soundness of his peculiar ontologism turns. We called it “a newly‐invented distinction between ideal intuition and perception or cognition,” and qualified the definition above quoted as an “assumption,” which we think is quite correct. It is new in Catholic philosophy, and has not been proved. We think, therefore, that the phraseology of Dr. Brownson makes his doctrine liable to an interpretation, even by educated men, which makes it similar to that of the condemned ontologism. That it is sound and safe we are not prepared to say. Neither do we say positively that it is not. If it is, we think Dr. Brownson can place it in a clearer light than he has yet done, and we shall heartily rejoice to see him distinctly enunciate and vindicate his fundamental doctrine, whether it does or does not accord with that which is held by the disciples of S. Thomas. Of his loyal intention to conform his doctrine to the decisions of the supreme authority in the church there can be no doubt. That he has so far succeeded in doing so, at least by an exact and explicit expression of it, we cannot help doubting. We cannot see that the distinction between ideal intuition and cognition, so far as we apprehend it, suffices.

We understand him to define ideal intuition as an act of God presenting himself to the intellect as its object, and to call the act of the intellect apprehending this ideal object empirical intuition. We understand him also to identify the immediate object on which the active intellect exercises its discursive operations with real, necessary being—_i.e._ God—although it does not make the judgment that eternal verities are real being, and that real being is God, immediately, but by means of reflection and reasoning. Now, we cannot see any essential difference between this doctrine and that of M. Branchereau and other ontologists. We do not think it possible to escape the ecclesiastical censure on the doctrine of the immediate cognition of God, unless something is placed, _ratione objecti visi_, between God and the intellect, making the cognition mediate. Moreover, we consider that the term cognition in the Roman decree covers intuition and simple apprehension, even in their confused state, as well as distinct conceptions and judgments. Dr. Brownson’s peculiar terminology and informal method of arguing make it, however, more difficult to understand his real doctrine and compare it with that of standard authors than if it were expressed in the usual style and method.

Dr. Brownson has also further charged the author of _Problems of the Age_ with having actually taught in the opening chapters of that essay, as first published in this magazine, the very ontologism condemned in the seven propositions. That there are ambiguous expressions and passages which taken apart from the whole tenor of the argument are liable to such an interpretation, we do not deny. But in reality, it was the doctrine of Gerdil which was intended, and expressed with sufficient distinctness for a careful and critical reader. This doctrine is expressed by the illustrious cardinal in these words: “God, who contains eminently the ideas of all things, impresses their intellectual similitudes in us by his action, which constitute the immediate object of our perceptions.” Upon which Liberatore remarks: “In these words Gerdil did not modify the ontologism which he professed in his youth, but retracted it. And indeed, how can even the shadow of ontologism be said to remain, when the immediate object of our perceptions is no longer said to be God, or ideas existing in God, but only their similitudes, which are impressed by the divine action upon our minds.”(99) A few quotations from the _Problems of the Age_ will prove the truth of our assertion that it proposed a theory similar to the theory of Gerdil.

“It is evident that we have no direct intellectual vision or beholding of God. The soul is separated from him by an infinite and impassable abyss.”(100) “God affirms himself originally to the reason by the creative act, which is first _apprehended by the reason_(101)_through the medium of the sensible_.... Thus we know God by creation, and creation comes into the most immediate contact with us on its sensible side.”(102) “The knowledge of God is limited to that which he expresses by the similitude of himself exhibited in the creation.”(103) “It is of the essence of a created spirit that its active intuition or intellective vision is limited to finite objects as its immediate terminus, commensurate to its finite, visual power. _It sees God only mediately_, as his being and attributes are reflected and imaged in finite things, and therefore its highest contemplation of God is _merely abstractive_.”(104)

More passages might be quoted, but these may suffice. The form of expression is frequently Giobertian, especially in the early chapters. But the author understood Gioberti in an orthodox sense. In our opinion Dr. Brownson, as well as ourselves, failed to a very great extent to understand his artfully‐expressed meaning. We used language similar to that of ontologism, but the sense in which we asserted the intuition of God was that of an infused idea of necessary and eternal truths; having their foundation and _eminent_, but not _entitative_ existence in God, as Father Kleutgen teaches; by virtue of which the mind can rise by discursive reasoning through the creation to an explicit conception of _what_ God is, and make the judgment _that_ he is. All that introductory part of his work which treats of ontology was, however, suppressed by the author when the _Problems of the Age_ was published in book‐form, precisely on account of the tincture of ideas and phraselogy, which too nearly resembled those of ontologists, and were too obscure and ambiguous.

We do not suppose that the ideology of those Catholic philosophers whom we may call Platonisers, for want of a more specific term, has been condemned; or the Peripatetic ideology enjoined as the only one which can safely be taught in the schools; by any positive precept of the Holy See. Nevertheless, we think the former ideology, in all its various shapes, has received a back‐handed blow, by the condemnation of ontologism, which must prove fatal to it. We see no logical alternative for those who reject psychologism, except between ontologism and the ideology of S. Thomas. The objective term of intellective conceptions must be, if it has real existence, either in God, in created things outside the mind, or in the mind itself. If it is the latter, a vague idealism which carries philosophy into an abstract world, separated by a chasm from the real, seems unavoidable. There is no real, concrete being, except in God and that which God has created. Unless the universals are mere conceptions or ideas, and unless ideas are, not that _by which_ the intellect perceives, but that _which_ it perceives—and this is psychologism—they must have their entitative existence in the essence of God, and be indistinguishable from it; or they must have it in created objects. The former cannot be safely held and taught. Therefore we must take the latter side of the alternative, or fall into psychologism. There is no solid rational basis, except that of scholastic philosophy, on which we can stand. The master in this school is the Angelic Doctor. Our interpretation, or that of any greater disciple of S. Thomas, has no authority, except that which is intrinsic to the evidence it furnishes that it is really his doctrine. The evidence is clear enough, however, to any competent person who examines it, that we have stated his doctrine correctly, and that all the criticisms upon the ideology we vindicate fall upon S. Thomas, and not upon us. Any one who will read the great works of Kleutgen and Liberatore can see this proved in the amplest manner from the writings of S. Thomas and in his own distinct statements. And any person of ordinary common sense will conclude that a man of the acute intelligence, conscientiousness, and patient application which characterize Father Liberatore, in a lifelong study of the clearest and most lucid author who ever wrote, cannot have failed to understand his philosophical system. Liberatore avowedly confines himself to an exposition of the philosophy of S. Thomas pure and simple. And in his great work, _Della Conoscenza Intellettuale_, he has given the most ample and lucid exposition of that particular part of it, with a solid refutation of the other principal theories. Kleutgen is more original, and not less erudite, though perhaps not equal to Liberatore in the thorough mastery of the writings of the Angelic Doctor; and he has given a most extensive and complete exposition of scholastic philosophy, accompanied by an exhaustive appreciation of modern systems, in his _Philosophie der Vorzeit_. It is very well for those who can do so to study S. Thomas for themselves, though even they cannot neglect his commentators. But it is idle to recommend this study to the generality of students in philosophy and theology, as a substitute for the study of the minor approved authors. Dogmatic and moral theology and philosophy are real sciences, as they are taught in the Catholic schools, and they can be and must be learned from text‐books and the oral instruction of professors. The presumption is in favor of the books and teachers approved by ecclesiastical authority, that they teach sound doctrine. There cannot be anything more injurious to the interests of ecclesiastical or secular education than to depreciate and undermine their legitimate authority, and thus awaken distrust in the minds of those who must receive their instruction from them, or else undertake the task of instructing themselves. Such an undertaking usually results in a failure which may have disastrous consequences. The greater number follow self‐ chosen and dangerous guides. The few of superior intelligence and activity of mind; who throw off respect for all authority except that which they recognize as absolutely infallible, or submit to through the worship which they pay to genius and to ideas which have captivated their intellect and imagination; are apt to indulge the futile and dangerous dream of remodelling philosophy and theology. Such have been the leaders of dissension, of heresy, and of apostasy. De Lamennais, St. Cyran, Gioberti, and Döllinger are examples. They began to deviate by breaking away from the common and present sense of the great body of authors in actual use and living teachers of theology. Every one knows where they ended. Similar tendencies and proclivities can be effectually suppressed only by a sound theology and a sound philosophy, together with that spirit called the _piety of faith_, which goes much beyond a mere submission to absolute and categorical decrees in regard to faith and morals. In conclusion, we venture very earnestly to advise all converts who have finished a liberal education before entering the church, not to study theology without also going through a careful course of philosophy, beginning with text‐books such as those of Father Hill and Liberatore.

Reminiscences Of A Tile‐Field.

Once upon a time there lived a king and a queen in a grand old group of Gothic towers that was called the Louvre. Nowadays we should call their house a palace, but in those good old times kings built houses to fight in as well as to live in, and their abodes had to do duty at once as palace, fortress, and prison. At the time we speak of this mass of straggling roofs and gables resembled a citadel mounting guard over Paris from the western side, as the Bastile did from the east; but when Francis I. came on the scene, he denounced the barbaric‐looking stronghold as a place too like a dungeon for a king to live in, though it did well enough for a hunting‐lodge. It was too venerable to be thrown down, and too stern in its original character to bend to any architectural modifications, so he decided to leave it as it was, and build a palace after his own fancy by the side it. He began, accordingly, the florid Italian edifice which now forms the western side of the old Louvre. He did not live to see the work completed; but it was continued by his son, who died soon after it was finished, and left his widow, Catherine de Médicis, in enjoyment of it. But the wily queen, looking to the future, saw that her son would one of these days be reigning in the Louvre, and that it might not suit her to remain his guest; so she set about building a palace for herself, where in due time she might plot and scheme, distil poisons, and light civil wars unmolested by the king’s presence or the prying eyes of his court. West of the Louvre, and in the then open country, was a tile‐field, which, from the fact of _tuiles_ being manufactured there, was called _Les Tuileries_. The Médicean sorceress touched the tiles with her wand, and up rose under that magic stroke the stately palace which was to be the centre of so many high and wonderful destinies, and which continued to bear through all changes and vicissitudes its first homely title of Les Tuileries. One life could not suffice for the completion of such a monument, however, and Catherine left it to her three king sons, successively to finish. But already in her own time the tile‐field was baptized in blood. From one of its Gothic windows the mother pulled the trigger in the trembling hand of the son which gave the signal for the massacre of S. Bartholomew. Thus in its very cradle did the Tuileries sign itself Haceldama, a field where blood should flow, where princes should sell and be sold, where a king should wrestle with the powers of darkness, and be dragged forth in ignominy to death. The two palaces, hitherto distinct and separate, were united by Charles IX., who erected the long gallery by the river’s side. It was not entirely finished when he died, leaving his brothers to make it ready for Henry IV., who is represented as traversing the gallery, leaning on De Guise, the day before Ravaillac’s dagger cut short the Béarnais’ career.

The idea of turning it into a museum was first suggested by Louis XVI., who reverted to the plan frequently, but was compelled by financial difficulties to leave the glory of its execution to Bonaparte. Those who have seen the beautiful old palace recently, before its partial destruction, would hardly recognize it as the same which fifteen years ago was choked up to its very windows by the rubbish of the encroaching town; the space now cleared away between the two palaces, the Louvre proper and the Tuileries, was filled with mean houses, for the most part shops. Even the façade of the Tuileries was cumbered and disfigured by a variety of shabby buildings, barracks, stables, and domestic offices, these latter being necessary for the convenience of its inmates—since royalty must dine—the original plan of the palace having made no provision for those vulgar essentials for the carrying on of daily life. It was an unsafe abode for royalty when safety needed to be thought of and the hearts of the people had ceased to be the king’s best stronghold; but when the Médicis reared the noble, picturesque old pile, they were troubled with no such considerations. The ghosts of constitutionalism and _sans‐culottism_ were slumbering quietly unsuspected in the womb of the future, and no provision was made for slaying or defying them. For nearly a century the Tuileries had been uninhabited, when, on the wrathful day of the 6th of October, the mob surged from Paris to Versailles, and dragged Louis Seize and Marie Antoinette from their beds, and installed them within its empty, neglected walls.

“Buildings, like builders, have their destiny.” Ever since the memorable morning when insurrection reared its hydra‐head under the windows of the Queen of France, and battered in the chamber door with clubs and tricolor‐ bedizened pikes, and sent her flying in terrified _déshabillé_ through secret corridors and trap‐tapestries into the king’s room for safety; ever since “rascality looked in the king’s face, and did not die,” but seized royalty by the beard, and led it, amidst hootings of triumph, to lodge where the people willed, the grand château of Versailles has stood vacant of kings and queens, its polished floors reflecting the dead monarchs on the walls, a great hush filling its broad galleries, grass growing in its courts, the silence of the past brooding everywhere. Noisy demagogues may scream and howl in the theatre where the Grand Monarch applauded the verses of Corneille and Racine, and their nimble heels may tread down some of the grass between the paving‐stones of the Cour du Roi, but they are but jackdaws chattering in the deserted temple. Versailles has lived its day, and outlived its generation.

Neglected and uncomfortable as the Tuileries was, the royal family had no choice but to go there. The Louvre was partly dilapidated and quite unfurnished, while the sister palace, though so long uninhabited, was still furnished, and needed comparatively little to make it, even in this sudden emergency, a suitable domestic residence. The discomforts of the first few days were great, but the royal captives were absorbed in graver cares, and bestowed no idle regrets on such small matters as personal accommodation. Louis was satisfied with his truckle‐bed, hurriedly provided by the nation in the tapestried room. “Where will your majesty please to sleep?” inquired an obsequious municipal, entering the presence; and majesty, with head bowed over his knees, answers, without deigning to look around and choose, “I am well enough here; let each lodge as he may.” So the truckle‐bed is got ready. Strange days followed this strange beginning. Paris for a week was drunk with joy. The mob had got the king in their possession. Loyal subjects looked on, not knowing whether to weep or to rejoice. The Orleanist faction chuckled boldly over the degradation of the crown, and over the fact that the persons of the king and, above all, of the queen were safe in a gilded prison.

The queen was far too wise and keen‐eyed to be deceived by the pale glimmer of popularity which, during the early days of their abode in Paris, shone upon them. Louis took pleasure in the scanty _vivats_ that greeted him when he sauntered out for a walk on the terrace—his only place of exercise now—and within doors amused himself with carpentry and lock‐ making. The Dauphin played at soldiering, dressed in military uniform, and gave the word of command to his men, a regiment of warriors from five to eight years old. Marie Antoinette had her library brought from Versailles, and sought refuge from thought in reading. Mme. Elizabeth, meanwhile, watches the signs of the coming storm, prays, loves, and hopes.

The Assembly had followed the king to Paris, and installed itself in the Salle de Manège, formerly the riding‐school of the Tuileries, and situated within sight of the palace on the north terrace. This proximity, whether accidental or designed, was a source of danger and humiliation to the king. The members could see the royal prison‐house from the windows of the Manège, and the prospect served to point many an insolent period in the tribune. Mirabeau used it with fine effect. “I see,” he cried, “the window whence a king of France, under the influence of execrable advisers, fired the shot which gave the signal of the massacre of S. Bartholomew!”

But the Assembly did not content itself with pointing the arrows of its rhetoric at the doomed Louis; it sought to give him more practical proofs of disrespect. The riding‐school being situated on the Terrace des Feuillants, the members declared that this terrace belonged to them, and not to the king; it was therefore thrown open as a public thoroughfare, the palace being thus exposed to the coming and going of the populace, who availed themselves of the opportunity of flaunting their disloyalty under the very windows of the sovereign. There was no longer any barrier on the north side, and, the external posts being all sentinelled by National Guards, the royal family had no control over either the courts or the gardens. This scandalous violation of his privacy roused even Louis to utter a mild protest to the Assembly, but it was met by one of the Girondists retorting that “the people lodged Louis in the Tuileries, but it nowise followed that they gave up to him the exclusive use of the gardens.” The unhappy king had no resource henceforth but in dignified patience, fed by the hope of escaping to the freedom and seclusion of St. Cloud at Easter. We know how, just as he had entered his carriage to start for that suburban castle, it was surrounded by the mob, and he himself only rescued from personal violence by Lafayette and his troop, who were, however, unable to effect his release. Louis re‐entered the Tuileries crushed and humbled, but inwardly resolved on some desperate attempt to escape from the insupportable bondage of his position. The abortive attempt to leave the Tuileries, even for his usual summer residence, roused a bitter feeling of suspicion against him, and more especially against the queen, which was soon manifested by the increasing insolence of the mob. They dared no longer show themselves in public, and even their afternoon walk on the terrace by the river’s side became impossible. They tried to avoid the humiliation and annoyance it provoked by rising at daybreak, and taking an hour’s exercise in the early dawn; but this soon became known, and had also to be abandoned. At last the queen complained that she “could not even open her windows on these hot summer evenings without being subjected to the grossest invectives and threats.”

When things came to this point, the king was forced to lend an ear to the proposals which had up to this time met with a dogged and somewhat contemptuous refusal. There was but one way of remedying the miseries of their position, and that was by flight. It was no longer a question of flying from humiliation, but from absolute and imminent danger. The most sanguine or the most obtuse observer could not but see that things were hastening to a fearful crisis, which, terminate how it may, must work ruin to the royal family.

Many schemes were arranged, but for one reason or another they fell through. Finally, it was settled that the sovereign should escape with his wife and children and sister to Montmédy. This was the utmost that could be wrung from Louis, even in this extremity. No arguments could induce him to consent to leave France, or even to cross the frontier with the purpose of re‐entering France the next day, though by so doing he would have shortened the journey and lessened its dangers. If even then he had consented to fly speedily, separately, instead of losing the precious days and weeks in preparations that only awoke suspicion and proved hindrances instead of helps! But in the race of destiny, who wins? Not he who flies, but he who waits. Louis waited too long, or not long enough; fled too late, if he should have fled at all.

The story of the flight to Varennes has been written by historians of all shades and camps, but it is generally tainted with such vehement partisanship that the simple, underlying facts become obscured, almost obliterated, by hysterical reproaches of this one and that; whereas the cause of the failure of that memorable expedition is to be sought rather in the attitude of the entire population, the atmosphere of the times, or, let us say at once, the mysterious leadings of the First Great Cause which overrules human events, even while it leaves the human instruments free to decide the issue. It is easy for one historian(105) to lay the blame on Marie Antoinette, who “could not travel without new clothes,” showing us how “Dame Campan whisks assiduous to this mantua‐maker and to that; and there is clipping of frocks and gowns, upper clothes and under, great and small—such clipping and sewing as might be dispensed with. Moreover, majesty cannot go a step anywhere without her _nécessaire_, dear _nécessaire_, of inlaid ivory and rosewood, cunningly devised, which holds perfumes, toilet implements, infinite small, queenlike furniture necessary to terrestrial life.” Poor Marie Antoinette! her grand, queenlike soul was lifted far above such silly “terrestrial life” by this time, and it is not likely that, when such tremendous stakes were impending, her care dwelt with new clothes or perfume bottles—so misleading does prejudice make the clearest mind, the most intentionally sincere witness. The plain truth is that the difficulty of the new clothes existed, but from a very different motive from that suggested by Mr. Carlyle. It was necessary that the queen and the royal children should be disguised, and for this purpose new clothes were essential, and it required all the ingenuity of Mme. De Tourzel, and Mme. Campan, and every one connected with the affair to get them made so as to fit the royal fugitives, and then conveyed into the palace without exciting the keen lynx‐eyes that were fixed on every incomer and outgoer passing through the queen’s apartments. As to the _nécessaire_ over which the Scotch philosopher breaks the vials of his scorn so loftily, it was wanted. Some box was wanted to hold the money, jewels, and certain indispensable papers that were to be taken on the journey, and the queen suggested that her dressing‐case should be used, adding at the same time that she was loath to leave it behind her, as it was almost the first present she had received from her husband—no great subject for philosophical sneers, as far as we can see. Nor did either _nécessaire_ or new clothes—though the obtaining and smuggling in of the latter caused much delay—give rise to any of the accidents which worked the failure of the scheme.

Then there was the new berlin to be provided—a lamentable mistake, but not one that deserves Mr. Carlyle’s withering sarcasms any more than the _nécessaire_. “Miserable new berlin!” he cries. “Why could not royalty go in an old berlin similar to that of other men? Flying for life, one does not stickle about one’s vehicle.” It was not for the newness or dignity of the vehicle that the queen stickled, but for its capability of carrying “all her treasures with her.” She positively refused to fly at all, unless it could be so contrived that she was not separated for an hour of the way from her husband, her children, and her beloved sister‐in‐law, the Princess Elizabeth. She insisted, moreover, that the few faithful friends who were to share her flight should be with them also, and not exposed to solitary risks in a separate conveyance. This was characteristic enough of the queen’s loyal heart towards those she loved, but it was unlike her practical sense and intelligence. M. de Fersen, who was taken into confidence from the first, declared that no travelling‐coach was to be found large enough to answer these requirements, and that one must be built on purpose. It so happened that the previous year he had ordered a berlin, of just such form and dimensions as was now wanted, for a friend of his in Russia; he therefore went to the coach‐maker, and desired him with all possible speed to build another on the same model for a certain Baronne de Korff, a cousin of his, who was about to return to St. Petersburg with her family and suite. The berlin was built, and, to baffle suspicion more effectually, was driven through some of the most public streets in Paris, in order to try it. The result was most satisfactory, and M. de Fersen talked aloud to his friends of the perfect coach he had ordered and partly designed for his cousin, Mme. de Korff.

The journey was fixed for the 19th of June. Everything was ready, every precaution had been taken, every possible obstacle anticipated. The Marquis de Bouillé, almost the only general whose devotion the king could trust to the death, was in command of the army of the Meuse, and Montmédy, a small but well‐fortified town, was situated in the midst of it. Here the royal family were sure of a safe and loyal asylum. The minor military arrangements were entrusted to M. de Goguelat, an officer of engineers, who was on Bouillé’s staff, and personally devoted to the king and queen. The Duc de Choiseul, under De Goguelat’s orders, was to furnish local detachments from his regiment of Royal Dragoons along the road, and to precede the royal departure by a few hours, so as to ensure all being in order at the various stations. M. de Goguelat made two experimental journeys to Montmédy himself, to ascertain the exact hour of arrival at each place. Unluckily, he forgot to calculate the difference between a light post‐chaise and a heavily‐built, heavily‐laden “new berlin.” Relays of horses were provided at each stage, and a detachment of cavalry from De Bouillé’s army was to be there also, and, after a short interval, to follow the new berlin, picking up each detachment successively, and thus swelling the force at every stage. The utmost secrecy was observed with all except the leaders of the expedition; the pretext alleged to the troops for all this marching being that a treasure was on its way to the north for payment of the army. All was waiting, when, at the last moment, owing to some difficulty about getting Mme. de Tourzel into the berlin, the king sent a counter‐order for the departure, saying it must take place, not on the 19th, but on the 20th. It was a woful delay. But at last, on the night of the 20th, behold the travellers under way. Mme. Royale’s _Mémoires_ give us the most authentic account of the mode of starting: “At half‐past ten, on the 20th of June, 1791, my brother was wakened up by my mother. Mme. de Tourzel brought him down to my mother’s apartment, where I also came. There we found one of the _gardes‐du‐corps_, M. de Malden, who was to assist our departure. My mother came in and out several times to see us. They dressed my brother as a little girl. He looked beautiful, but he was so sleepy that he could not stand, and did not know what we were all about. I asked him what he thought we were going to do. He answered: ‘I suppose to act a play, since we have all got these odd dresses.’ At half‐past ten we were ready. My mother herself conducted us to the carriage in the middle of the court, which was exposing herself to great risk.”

The _rôles_ were distributed as follows: Mme. de Tourzel, governess of the children of France, was Baronne de Korff; Mme. Royale and the Dauphin, her daughters. The queen was their governess, Mme. Rocher. The Princess Elizabeth was _dame‐de‐compagnie_, under the name of Rosalie. The king was Durand, the _valet‐de‐chambre_. The officers of the disbanded _gardes‐du‐ corps_ went as couriers and servants. This was a grievous mistake amidst so many others. These gentlemen were totally inexperienced in their assumed characters, and, by their personal appearance and ignorance of the duties they undertook, proved a fatal addition to the party. The preparations were altogether too cumbrous and elaborate, but it is difficult to accuse any special portion of them as superfluous in a time when the public spirit was strained to such a pitch of suspicion and hatred; though prudence might have hinted that this heavy paraphernalia was far more calculated to awake the jealous mistrust of the people than to baffle or allay it.

All being now ready, the fugitives furtively left the Tuileries, and proceeded to enter the hackney‐coach that stood in wait for them outside the palace. “Mme. de Tourzel, my brother, and I got into the coach first,” says Mme. Royale. “M. de Fersen was coachman. To deceive any one who might follow us we drove about several streets. At last we returned to the Petit Carrousel, which is close to the Tuileries. My brother was fast asleep in the bottom of the carriage.”

And now another traveller steals softly out of the palace, her face shrouded by a gypsy‐hat. As she steps on the pavement a carriage, escorted by torch‐bearers, dashes past. An unaccountable impulse moves her to touch the wheel with the end of her parasol. The occupant of the carriage is Lafayette, on his way to the king’s _couchée_. He is late, having been delayed by urgent matters. They tell him the king has already retired for the night. Meantime the lady in the gypsy‐hat, leaning on M. de Malden, one of the amateur couriers, loses her way in the dark street, and keeps the occupants and driver of the hackney‐coach half an hour waiting in an agony of suspense. At last, after crossing and recrossing the river, they make their way to the coach, and start. Another presently follows them. So they jog on through the dark night to the spot where the new berlin is waiting; but, lo! they arrive, and no berlin is there. The king himself alights, and prowls about in search of it. M. de Fersen at last finds it, overturns the hackney‐coach into a ditch, mounts the berlin, and drives on to Bondy. There the travellers find a relay waiting in a wood. The chivalrous Swede stands bareheaded in the dewy dawn‐light, and bows his loyal farewell to the king and Marie Antoinette. They press hands in silent thanks, and the chevalier goes his way—to Stockholm, where that same day, nineteen years hence, he will meet a more brutal end than that which awaits the royal pair he has befriended—beaten to death with sticks by a savage mob, who, on the impulse of the moment, accuse him of having been accessory to the death of Prince Charles Augustus. But now he breathes with a glad sense of victory and security, and stands with bright, moistened eye watching the huge berlin lurching on its way, the only thing that broke the stillness of the wood, sleeping yet under the fading stars.