Chapter XIX: Part II (1)

We said, in our last article,[41] that the Catholic reader would find this second play much more painful than the first. We are sure, too, that the non-Catholic reader will deem it inferior in point of interest. Yet we do not agree with the London _Spectator_ that there is an “artistic chasm” between the two plays. At any rate, whatever constructive defects are to be found in the present performance, there is no falling off in dramatic power.

Footnote 41:

THE CATHOLIC WORLD, March, 1877, p. 777. We regret to be informed by
the publisher that this really great drama is now out of print.

The play is preluded by an “Introductory Scene,” in which Mary is discovered prostrate on the tomb of Jane Grey. This does not at all surprise us after the remorse we have witnessed in the last scene of the preceding play. Holding herself criminally responsible for the execution of her cousin, it was natural for her to perform “penances severer than the Church prescribes.” The gentle Fakenham—now Abbot of Westminster—may well express anxiety for his penitent.

“Pray God
Her mind give way not: sorely is it shaken.
These tearful macerations of the spirit,
These fasts that chain all natural appetites,
Nor mortify the sinful flesh alone,
Must be restrained: or death will close the scene.”

While he is soliloquizing Gardiner enters with Elizabeth. Fakenham has requested the latter’s presence.

“Whate’er hath passed,
Be sure her Grace hath ever truly loved you.
Therefore we trust your coming may dispel
The baleful visions that enthrall her spirit;
Dispersed, as fiends before rebuking Saints.”

Elizabeth answers:

“You hope too much. Awakened jealousy
Preys on her, like the Egyptian’s asp.”

But she is mistaken; for presently the queen, on recognizing the “veiled mourner,” says tenderly:

“I part
The tresses on thy brow; and gaze upon thee
_With the strong yearning of a blighted love_.
I know thee, sister! Take me to thine arms—
And let me weep.”

The weeping revives Mary’s energy, but that energy takes a shape in which we see the old despair combined with a new fanaticism.

“ELIZABETH. These mingling tears wash out
All venom from past sorrow—”

QUEEN. “Not from mine!
Immedicable evil hath infected
The fount of life within me. I shall die
In premature decay; and fall aside
As withered fruit falls from a blasted branch.
I, like a mother by her dying babe,
Have closed the eyes of hope; and o’er my heart
Torpid despair fans with his vampire wings.”

Then, suddenly apostrophizing the “Eternal Majesty,” she appeals, as one “hemmed in by dark conspiracies” and “baited by schismatics,” for “prescience to detect” and “strength to control them”; deeming herself, once more, “the Lord’s Vicegerent,” to execute his judgments.

“Fly, brood of darkness! for my prayer hath risen:
And God will hear, and smite, as once he smote
The sin of Korah: and the earth shall ope
And swallow blasphemy; and plagues leap forth
Consuming impious men: even _till the Church,
Swinging her holy censer in the midst,
Shall stay the pestilence_, God’s wrath appeased!”

This is a fine allusion to the destruction of the three schismatical upstarts in the wilderness; and it is surprising to see a Protestant author attribute to Catholics so much knowledge of the Bible. Nevertheless, poor sinful mortals never make a greater mistake than when they fancy themselves ministers of what they call the “justice” of Him “whose thoughts are not as our thoughts.”

Perhaps Fakenham was about to make some such reply; for this poet-created Mary Tudor—after pausing, we suppose, to take breath—continues:

“Answer me not. I rise from this cold grave,
My penitential couch, with heart as frozen
As the dead limbs beneath, and will unbending
As this hard stone that shuts her from the world.”

Thus we are fully prepared for anything she may do; yet, in fact, she proves singularly innocuous.

The play opens with a discussion between Gardiner and Fakenham on the subject of the queen’s marriage. Both are agreed that she ought to marry, for the good of State and Church; but either has his eye on a very different candidate for her hand. The abbot’s candidate is Reginald Cardinal Pole—a character to whom our author does full justice as among the loftiest of his time. Fakenham thus describes him as a “student at Padua”:

“A nobler presence
Never embodied a more gracious soul:
Ardent, yet thoughtful; in the search of knowledge
Unwearied, yet most temperate in its use.
_Whate’er he learned he wore with such an ease,
It seemed incorporated with his substance;
And beamed forth, like the light that emanates
From a saint’s brow._”

And again:

“Oft have I watched him sitting
For hours, on some rude promontory’s edge,
Wrapt in his mantle, his broad brow, sustained
With outspread palm, o’ershadowing his eyes.
And there, as one of Titan birth, he lingered
In strange community with nature; mingling
With all around—the boundless sky, the ocean,
The rock, the forest—looking back defiance
Unto the elements: _as some lone column
Beneath the shadow of a thunder-cloud_.”

For the thought in these last six lines Sir Aubrey seems indebted to Lord Byron, that poet “of Titan birth”—who, indeed, would have sat for the picture far better, we imagine, than Pole; except that, instead of “looking defiance at the elements” (an attitude for which we see no reason in Pole’s case either), his face would have shown ecstatic joy at “mingling with all around.”

“Ye elements, in whose ennobling stir
I feel myself exalted!”

(_Childe Harold_, canto iv.)

The way Gardiner sneers at Fakenham’s candidate, and then introduces his own, affords us an opportunity of correcting the author’s misconceptions of this prelate. First, then, there is no proof whatever that Gardiner was blood-thirsty, or even severe. Had he been the relentless persecutor he is popularly represented, his own diocese of Winchester would have become the scene of numerous executions for heresy; whereas, in fact, not one such execution can be shown to have taken place there. Neither, again, is there any more evidence that he egged on Mary to acts of cruelty. If he did make the attempt, he failed signally; for the real Mary Tudor was personally guiltless of a single act of intolerance even. The only authentic instance in which Gardiner played the part of evil genius to the queen was when he urged her to retain the Royal Supremacy established by her father—her title and authority as head of the English Church—a counsel which elicited the witty reply: “Women, I have read in Scripture, are forbidden to speak in the church. Is it, then, fitting that _your_ church should have a dumb head?” At the time of giving this bad advice Gardiner belonged to the anti-papal party—which, of course, was therefore schismatical, though nominally Catholic. And this time-serving adhesion was the one great sin of his life. He repented of it some time before his death, and publicly lamented it in a sermon at St. Paul’s Cross, preached on occasion of the reconciliation of the kingdom with the Holy See; nevertheless, the memory of it so weighed upon his conscience when he lay on his death-bed that he asked to have the Passion of Our Saviour read to him, and, when the reader came to the denial of Peter, said: “Stop! I, too, have denied my Lord with Peter; but I have not learned to weep bitterly with Peter.”

We may here remark that, had our author been acquainted with the above facts of Gardiner’s history, he would not have sacrificed truth to poetic effect by making him die suddenly after the burning of Cranmer; nor, again, have put into his mouth such an un-English argument as this against Pole’s fitness to share the throne with Mary:

“He is _but an Englishman_:
And ’tis an adage older than the hills
That prophets are not honored in their land.”

One so anxious, as Gardiner must have been at that time, to keep _foreign domination_ out of England could never have advocated the marriage of his sovereign with “Spanish Philip,” nor, indeed, have been likely to call the latter’s father

“That wisest monarch, most devout of Christians,
Potent of captains, fortunate of men.”

But, of course, the poet stands to his colors. Having selected Gardiner for the villain _par excellence_, he makes him welcome even foreign domination in the person of a bigoted prince, who, he knows, will imbrue his hands in the blood of heretics.

Philip does not come upon the scene till the third Act; but the intervening scenes form a prelude to his advent.

First we have the queen in council on the question of her marriage, and particularly of the Spanish prince’s suit. While asking Gardiner’s advice she betrays her love for Reginald, and is quickly crushed into abandoning that hope by the chancellor’s daring assurance that her cousin is certainly Pope. Accordingly, she yields reluctant assent to the prayer of Philip’s ambassador. Then, in the same scene, follows a “patient hearing” of Ridley and Latimer, whose contumacious spirit is well shown by the dramatist. Mary treats them with great forbearance, and leaves them to ponder what she has said. The closing passage of this scene is noteworthy. Latimer boasts:

“O queen! that day is past
When spiritual knowledge was confined to priests.
Our very babes drink knowledge as they suck.
Each stripling, as he runs, plucks from each bough
The fruit of knowledge.”

Mary’s reply is of surprising force and beauty:

“Ah, sirs, have a care!
The tree of knowledge was an evil thing,
_With root in hell, and fruitage unto death_.
But in the self-same garden likewise grew
Another mystery, the tree of life.
This too bore fruit, unseen till after-time:
And this was Christ. Children of Adam, we,
_Condemned to cultivate what first we stole,
Must tend the second tree with watchful love,
Or perish by the poison of the first_.”

The remaining scene of this Act and the opening scene of the next are taken up chiefly with the disturbance occasioned by the approaching nuptials. Underhill, the “Hot-Gospeller,” is introduced, together with riotous citizens and the antagonists Sandys and Weston. Underhill is an honest fellow, and loyal to his queen, whose panegyrist he becomes at the play’s close. Though the rioters are in the minority, the rebellion becomes strong enough to attack Whitehall Palace, where Mary is seen at the opening of the second Act. Her masculine valor is here displayed. First she leans from the window to encourage her soldiers, then actually sallies forth to head them in person, and wins the day by thus risking her life. In the second scene Underhill excites the indignation of Sandys by his chivalrous defence of the queen not only as the one

“Whom the Lord gives to rule o’er Israel,”

but for her clemency.

“UNDERHILL. _The queen is not well served_.
You heard yourself
How, leaning from the Holbein gallery,
Where she so long stood target to your shafts,
She bade her furious knights to spare, and spake
Peace to the suppliant throng.”

“SANDYS. Yet your fierce captains
Do ramp along the streets with bloody staves,
Hunting the white-faced citizens like rats;
Or at their own doors summarily hang them.”

* * * * *

“UNDERHILL. Not fifty thus have died: a sorrowful sum
If measured by domestic pangs, yet _small
If balanced by the evil of their plots_:
Small if contrasted with the precedents
Of former feuds. In Henry’s time, they say,
Full seventy thousand their viaticum
Had from the hangman.”

But our author does more than make Underhill her apologist. He seems anxious, every now and then, to remind us that he privately thinks much better of his heroine than the history he has read allows him to represent. He sets off the gentler side of her nature in strong contrast to the vindictive, and, indeed, attributes the latter to inherited qualities for which she is not responsible. Accordingly, in the third and fourth scenes of the second Act Mary’s generous forgivingness, and especially to Elizabeth, shines out gloriously.

Count Egmont, Philip’s envoy, has placed upon her finger his master’s betrothal ring, when Renaud, the Spanish ambassador, strikes in with:

“Permit me
To be so bold as to suggest ’twere prudent
His Grace delayed till treason be put down.
_Too many prisoners your Grace releases_.

QUEEN. It was the custom of my forefathers
To pardon criminals upon Good Friday.

* * * * *

RENAUD. Pardon me: there may be
Some guiltier. Our prince must be kept back
Should your Grace yield to mistimed clemency.

* * * * *

Forgive my plainness. Can King Philip come
While criminals remain unjustified?
_Your sister waits her trial._

GARDINER. Let me speak.
While she, the princess, lives, there is no safety
For England, for the Church.”

Here Bridges, Lieutenant of the Tower, enters with a sealed warrant.

“BRIDGES. Your Grace will pardon, if, in a case like this,
Your servant feels misgiving. This sealed warrant
Commands me yield the princess—to be dealt with
As sentence shall direct.

QUEEN. O thou good servant!
Thy queen, on her heart’s knees, thanks and rewards thee.
Whose is this deed? By God’s death, answer me!
Ay, Gardiner, thou shalt answer for this thing,
If thou hast done it.

GARDINER. Let me see the paper.
A sorry trick to fright the princess! Trust me,
I had no hand in it. [_He tears the warrant._

QUEEN. _Inhuman hounds!
That worry your poor victim ere you slay it._
But I shall balk your malice. Silence, Gardiner!
Too much already hath been said: your tongues
Are deadlier than poison. Bridges, through you,
Who pitied poor Jane Grey, I shall henceforth
Secure my sister. You have known and loved her.
You are my servant now. Receive your knighthood.”

Thus foiled in their design, Renaud and Gardiner pretend, of course, that they did not for a moment mean the death of the princess, but only her removal; and the Spaniard goes on to explain that this “removal” was to be effected “by a bridegroom’s sweet compulsion”—mentioning Philibert of Savoy as a suitor—and then, finding that offer contemptuously rejected, suggests “the kind keeping of the Hungarian queen.”

“QUEEN. Be content, sir.
_My sister hath but one friend in this council—
Myself_, companion of her youth. _It may be
She hath compassed ill against me: yet will not I,
Who fostered her lone childhood, now destroy her
By death or exile._ You are malcontent.
Conform ye to my will: I shall not swerve.”

In the following scene, where Mary and Elizabeth have it all to themselves, the generosity of the former is the more touching by reason of her reproaches, which Elizabeth can only answer by acting a part which such a dissembler could very easily feign. Mary shows strong grounds for suspecting her loyalty, but nobly acquits her and replaces on her finger the ring which was the pledge of love between them, saying:

“Or innocent or guilty, I forgive you.”

We regret that space does not allow us to transcribe this scene in full.

We pass to the third Act, which introduces the two best-drawn characters of the play—Philip and Reginald Pole.

In these two men the author has illustrated—perhaps unconsciously—the antipodal extremes of the moral results of the Catholic religion. In Pole we see a character perfectly Christlike in its mixture of majesty with gentleness; in Philip one who has degraded faith into superstition, and made doctrines and means of grace the instruments of selfishness and passion. The greater the good in a system, the greater the evil into which it may be perverted. The amiable Fakenham tells Gardiner, in the previous scene, his mind about the Spaniard’s portrait:

“A moody man,
Whose countenance is ghastly, bearing dismal:
For ever wrangling, rude. His glance is sinister,
Stealthy: his laughter a sardonic sneer.
_I would rather face a vulture o’er a corpse,
Than such a man, whose hell is in himself._
He is a tree of death.”

Gardiner may well wince as he replies:

“You have a caustic brush:
The canvas burns beneath it.”

Yet poor Queen Mary fondly looks forward to the coming of her affianced as (to borrow Byron’s exquisite metaphor)

“the rainbow of her future years—
Before whose heavenly hues all sorrow disappears.”

Neither does she betray any foreboding in consequence of the storm that ushers in her wedding-day. The bridegroom, on the contrary, peevishly exclaims:

“A sorry day for our solemnities!
I kiss this crucifix. Avert the omen,
Most holy James of Compostella!”

_He_ does not see in this conjugal union

“The cloud-compelling harbinger of love.”

The “omen” is not unfelt, though, by some of the spectators, particularly when Doctor Sandys gives tongue about it. The wedding-scene is simple enough. The queen says, very prettily, when Philip offers a diamond ring:

“Nay, my lord:
I would be wed, like any other maiden,
With the plain hoop of gold.”

It is the remaining half of the play which makes the whole so inferior to the first play. Not that, as we have said, there is any deficiency of dramatic power. Philip and the cardinal are masterfully handled. Full justice, too, is done—from the author’s stand-point—to the characters of Gardiner, Cranmer, and the rest. But a thick gloom overhangs the entire picture; and the glaring historical untruth of much of it is no relief to Catholic eyes.

Philip and Pole clash instantly. The Spaniard has a presentiment of this at the moment when Sir John Gage announces

“The cardinal legate’s boat hath touched the beach.

QUEEN. The cardinal arrived! My dear, dear cousin!
Go, my lord chamberlain—go, Sir John Gage,
And bear our greetings to his Eminence.
Let his legantine cross be borne before him;
And all appliances of holy state
Attend his blessed footsteps. This our king,
And we, shall welcome him on Whitehall stairs.

PHILIP. You are right gracious to the cardinal.
In Spain we condescend less.

QUEEN. Ah! you’ll love him,
As I do, when familiarly you know him.

PHILIP. I somewhat doubt it.”

In the next scene, when the cardinal has congratulated the queen on the return of England to the faith—telling the nation:

“Be sure
The light devolving from great Gregory
Still shines from Peter’s chair. Who turns from it
Renounces hope. Peace ripens in its beams”—

and Mary has joyfully responded:

“Here stand we without question, king and queen;
And, with our Parliament, implore the pope
For reconciliation. Take this missive:
It is sincere. Kneeling we crave your blessing!”—

Philip interjects:

“Your Eminence shall pardon my stiff knees—
Stiff, Spanish manners. Ha! I cannot kneel.”

No wonder the queen faints as the cardinal blesses her.

Philip, having thus early begun with insolence, loses no time in showing the mixture of brute and devil that he is. He threatens to leave England because his sanguinary counsels are not taken; whereupon we are rejoiced to see the author make Mary as well as Pole defend the policy of “free discussion.” Of course Gardiner supports Philip eagerly. Presently—so outrageous is Philip’s conduct to his wife—the cardinal’s indignation can contain itself no longer, and his dignified remonstrance stings the king into exclaiming:

“Were I a basilisk, I’d look thee dead!”

Gardiner urges Pole to retire; but the hero answers:

“Not so. My heart is strong:
And like some stalwart wrestler, who hath need
Of exercise, and doubts nor heart nor limb,
I shrink not from the combat. _He who carries
His cross, a daily burden, well may stand
In front of any giant of the ring
Who boasts he can move spheres._”

And again he warns the monster:

“Ay: you are great
Above us by your station, as the vulture
Upon his mountain pinnacle. What then?
The arrow makes a pathway in the air:
_The peasant’s hands can reach the feathered tyrant_,
_And from the vale quench his despotic eye_.”

—“Vulture,” mark: not eagle.

We find a profound study in Mary’s love for Philip, and particularly in its persistence. How she could feel toward such a man anything beyond wife-like duty—she, too, who had loved Reginald Pole from her childhood—is mysterious indeed. It will doubtless be said that the poet intends this new love for a part of her madness—like her passion for the worthless Courtenaye: her craving for love being such as to invest any spouse with “Cytherea’s zone.” Then, again, the treatment Pole receives at Philip’s hands, and his sublime bearing under it, ought to have the result of alienating her affections from the Spaniard even more than the latter’s behavior to herself. Hear her cry, one moment:

“Poor heart!
Thou wilt not break! Insult unmitigated!
Witnessed—by him!—by Pole! O Reginald!
Avenged!”

And the next, see her so overjoyed by an usher announcing “the king” that she springs up from the suppliant posture in which she has just been praying

“that even as the thief
On the third cross I may have peace in heaven”—

springs up, and exclaims wildly:

“The king! King Philip!
O speed him hither! Stay: here’s for thy news—
A jewel from my finger. Haste thee, friend.”

And again, though his Majesty enters “moodily,” she can actually greet him thus:

“O Philip. Philip! art thou come to me?
_And shall there not now be an end of weeping?_
I was thinking of thee—whom else think I of?
I talked of thee—of whom is all my talking?
But thou art here again: _and my poor heart,
Like a caged bird, is beating at its bars,
To fly forth to the comfort of thy bosom_.
Speak—speak—_my soul_! and give me peace.”

Verily, this _is_ madness! Who has ever seen so extraordinary a picture of woman before? Has not the poet drawn something impossible? Not at all. He simply displays, we think, an unusual knowledge of the feminine heart. A much less acquaintance with that organ should prevent surprise at any phenomena it may exhibit—particularly in the shape of undeserved love or unreasoning constancy.

Of course the poor woman’s fondness only irritates her lord, instead of appeasing him; so he tells her bluntly what he has come for—to deliver his ultimatum; which is, first, the removal of the legate; and, secondly, the death of the heretical prelates. Of his feeling towards the cardinal he says:

“Call it not hatred, but antipathy:
Such as the callow chicken feels for hawks,
Or wild horse for the wolf. Aversion call it:
That wraps me in a cold and clammy horror
When we approach. I know he cannot harm me;
_And have small doubt he would not if he could_.
But still, my flesh creeps if I do but touch him,
As when one strokes a cat’s hair ’gainst the grain.

* * * * *

Odious is his garb
Of ostentatious purple; jewelled hands;
_That beard down-streaming like the chisel’d locks
Of Moses from the hand of Angelo_.”

Like a gleam of sunshine, for a moment, comes a happy description of a visit from Elizabeth to the queen. Underhill is the narrator. It is in the ninth scene of this too long third Act.

“Her royal barge
Was garlanded with flowers, festooned around
An awning of green satin, richly broidered
With eglantine and buds of gold. The bright one
Beneath this canopy reclined in state,
Fairer than Cleopatra with her Roman.
Her royal sister on the bowery shore
Of Richmond met her, kissing her 'tween whiles;
Her wan cheek flushing to a healthier glow.
With hospitable care, and love, she led
Elizabeth to where, shrined in green leaves
And flowers, a tent, curtained with cloth of gold
And purple samite, stood; whose folds were wrought
With silver fleur-de-lys and gold pomegranates.
The music they so love breathed in their ears
Like amorous blandishment: and when the morn
Rippled along the wave with soberer ray,
The princess stept once more into her barge,
And floated down the current like a swan.”

Yet one more quotation from this Act; for we shall have but little to cite from Acts fourth and fifth. The cardinal, after arguing with Gardiner against the severe measures that are being taken under his and Bonner’s supervision, and defending the queen from the charge of approval—her consent having been forced, and things of which she was ignorant done in her name—finds relief in conversing with Fakenham, whose virtues he thoroughly appreciates. The latter speaks of his friend’s failing strength; and Pole, at a loss to account for it, says he has “heard of vampire poisons,” but instantly suppresses the suspicion. They have been up all night, apparently.

“CARDINAL. A sudden sunburst!—Lo!
God’s Image in our heart is as yon orb
Unto the universe; _the eye of nature,
Dispersing rays more eloquent than tongues_;
Beams that give life as well as light; whose absence
Wraps in cold shadow all that moves and breathes.
At times that Image walks through spheres remote;
Unobvious to the largely wandering eye:
Then nightmare darkness sits upon the soul:
Then, by its own shade mantled, waits the soul,
Like some dark mourner, lonely in his house.
_But the harmonious hours fulfil themselves;
And sunrise comes unlooked for, peak to peak
Answering in spiritual radiance. This is indeed
So palpably to meet Divinity,
That hence the Pagan erred, not knowing God._”

In the fourth Act we have, first, the recall of Pole to Rome, contrived by Philip and Gardiner. The queen refuses to let him go; but while, in obedience to her, he remains in England, he resigns his legateship in submission to the interdict. Then comes the picture-scene, which is admirably contrived. The poor queen stops before Philip’s picture and talks to it as if it were a shrine. The original enters and brutally disenchants his worshipper. After a bitter interview, in which Mary accuses him of conjugal infidelity, the Spaniard takes his departure, answering her “Begone!” with a sudden “For ever!”

“QUEEN (_alone_). I submit to God’s decree.
Was it for this my maiden liberty
Was yielded?—to be spurned, despised, and still
Bear on without redress? O grief! O shame!
[_She approaches the picture of Philip._
Back, silken folds, that hide what was my joy,
And is my torture! Back!—See, I have rent you,
False, senseless idol, from thy tinselled frame!
I wrench thee forth—I look on thee no more!
And thus—and thus— [_she tears up the picture_]
I scatter thee from out
The desecrated temple of my heart! [_A pause._
My brain is hot—this swoln heart chokes my throat
Yet I am better thus than self-deceived.
Die, wretched queen! O die, dishonored wife!
_I pant for the cold blessing of the grave!_”

Next follows the trial of Ridley and Latimer. Cranmer, too, is present, and disputes, but is not on trial. The contrast between Gardiner and Pole is admirable. Mary, too, is represented as sedulously just. Ridley and Latimer speak, of course, as if perfectly conscientious and worthy of martyrdom, but make no attempt to disprove the principle of submission to authority, insisting solely on their own infallibility. The cardinal is at last compelled to say of them:

“This is very grievous!
Madam, so please you, these be heated men,
Who may not be convinced, and will not bend.”

He has better hopes of Cranmer; but his gentle earnestness is lost upon him no less.

Here be it remembered that it was the secular, and not the ecclesiastical, arm which inflicted the death-penalty for obdurate heresy. This penalty was the law in those days—days when every kind of felony was more severely punished than now. Whatever we moderns may think of this law, we must not forget that heresy is the greatest and most pernicious of crimes; and, again, that it was only formal and aggressive heresy that got itself arraigned and condemned. Moreover, what made the civil power so severe upon it was the fact that it was always coupled with sedition and treason.

But before we close our remarks upon the executions in Mary’s reign, let us look for a moment on the beautiful scene which intervenes between the one we have been examining and the prison-scene at Oxford—the last of the fourth Act.

Mary and Reginald are closeted together. The holy priest seeks to comfort his cousin.

“Poor soul!
Be to yourself more charitable. Think
That One there is who answers for your faults
And multiplies your merits.

QUEEN. Hope rests there:
Or I were mad.

CARDINAL. All men are born to suffer.
What are the consolations of the Scripture,
The fruit of exhortation and of prayer,
If now you quail? No, you shall quail no more.

QUEEN. _My web of life was woven with the nettle._
My very triumphs were bedewed with tears.
What now is left?

CARDINAL. Religion. _As the sunbow
Shines in the showery gloom and makes the cloud
A shape of glory_, in thy path she stands
A herald of high promise. Blessed emblem!
Religion bids thee hope. This gloomy life
Must be amended. We must draw thee hence.

QUEEN. Thanks be to God! time works while
we grieve on.
_Deprive not sorrow of the shade she needs,
The sad quiescence of desponding thought_.
Job also raised his voice, and wailed aloud,
And so was comforted. Remember, also,
In weeping I can pray. Should I not?

CARDINAL. Yea.
Pray with thanksgiving: ’tis the sum of duty.”

The sublimity of this passage needs no comment. The rest of the scene is equally touching. Mary speaks for an instant of Philip. She is still obliged to say:

“Whene’er I turn my thoughts to God, one image
Stands between me and heaven. Instead of prayer
A sigh for Philip trembles on my lips.

CARDINAL. To pine thus for the absent, as men mourn
The dead, is sinful.

QUEEN. Speak no more of him.
Thoughts holier be my guide.”

Then Reginald teaches her what it is

“To stablish thrones on bounty; reign through love.”

* * * * *

_The chief of greatness is surpassing goodness_:
And that outsoars the ken of mortal eyes—
Hidden with God.”

She offers him the archbishopric of Canterbury. He answers musingly:

“He who hath stood
Upon the first step of the papal throne,
And vacant left the Vatican, may look
With eye undazzled on the chair of Lambeth.”

Then he accepts, and presently the queen observes:

“I have long thought it strange that you refused
The greater honor though the heavier burden:
The proffered crown of Rome.

CARDINAL [_after much agitation_]. Look not alarmed. [_A pause._
You touch the mind’s immedicable wound.
O God! that I had died before I knew thee!
Pardon me—pardon me!

QUEEN. We both need pardon.
Let us forget the past. God strengthen us!

CARDINAL. Fear not. _Henceforth we gaze upon each other,
As the two Cherubim upon the Ark—
The living God between._

QUEEN. Then take my hand.
It will be colder soon. May God be with you!”

This “immedicable wound” is the poet’s Protestant fancy, yet the pathos of the scene is exquisite.

The prison-scene at Oxford gives us, first, Masters Ridley and Latimer taking leave of Cranmer; then Cranmer watching their execution from the window, and Gardiner, unobserved, watching him. The famous recantation number one takes place; and the subsequent despair of the wretch closes the fourth Act.

The fifth Act we do not care to analyze minutely, so much of it is sickeningly untrue. Mary has become fanatical again. Pole tells her that “the poor, by thousands, perish in the flames.” This is utterly false. All the executions under Mary’s government did not amount to more than two hundred and seventy-seven, and “from this list of 'martyrs for the Gospel’ must be excluded,” says a learned writer, “the names of those who suffered for political offences or other crimes.” Dr. Maitland, the celebrated librarian of Lambeth, in his _Essays on Subjects connected with the Reformation in England_, speaks of “the bitter and provoking spirit of some of those who were very active and forward in promoting the progress of the Reformation; the political opinions which they held, and the language in which they disseminated them; the fierce personal attacks which they made on those whom they considered as enemies; and, to say the least, the little care which was taken by those who were really actuated by religious motives, and seeking a true reformation of the Church, to shake off _a lewd, ungodly, profane rabble_, who joined in the cause of Protestantism, thinking it, in their depraved imaginations, or hoping to make it by their wicked devices, the cause of liberty against law, of the poor against the rich, of the laity against the clergy, of the people against their rulers.” From this rabble, then, came the “poor” who “perished in the flames.”

As to Oxford’s pretended “martyrs,” Ridley and Latimer were inciters of sedition and brought upon themselves the vengeance of the law; while Thomas Cranmer was, without exception, the most unmitigated miscreant in the whole disgraceful business of what is called the Reformation. Who will question that he richly deserved the stake after bringing to it so many victims, in Henry’s reign, for denying doctrines which he himself was secretly denying at the time? There are living Anglican writers who rejoice in calling all these boasted reformers a set of “unredeemed villains.”

Of course, as we said in our review of the first play, we acquit the author of all conscious prejudice. The last words he puts into his heroine’s mouth—“Time unveils Truth”—are an appeal to “the avenger,” who will not fail to do her justice yet. It was a noble thought to make Underhill, the Hot-Gospeller, her panegyrist. Oxford vaticinates:

“Awful queen!
Hardly of thee Posterity shall judge:
For they shall measure thee—

UNDERHILL. Let me speak, sir:
For I have known, and been protected by her,
When fierce men thirsted for my blood. I say not
That she was innocent of grave offence;
Nor aught done in her name extenuate.
But I insist upon her maiden mercies,
_In proof that cruelty was not her nature_.
She abrogated the tyrannic laws
Made by her father. She restored her subjects
To personal liberty; to judge and jury;
Inculcating impartiality.
Good laws, made or revived, attest her fitness
Like Deborah to judge. She loved the poor:
And fed the destitute: and they loved her.
_A worthy queen she had been if as little
Of cruelty had been done under her
As by her._ To equivocate she hated:
And was just what she seemed. In fine, she was
_In all things excellent while she pursued
Her own free inclination without fear_.”

NANETTE.
_A LEGEND OF THE DAYS OF LOUIS XV._

I.

A police report is scarcely the place where one would look to find an idyl—least of all a French police report. But just as one comes at times upon a shy violet nestling in the dusty city ways, even in such an unpromising quarter, and in the records of a still more unpromising time, did the present writer stumble upon a veritable romance—

“Silly sooth
That dallies with the innocence of love
Like the old age.”

Let the reader judge if it be not a genuine violet.

Of the many strange functions of the Parisian police in the days of the well-beloved Louis XV.—and altogether most worthless of his name—one of the strangest appears to have been that of furnishing for the amusement of the royal circle regular reports, or rather novelettes, of all episodes, striking or romantic, that came under their notice. The French have always had a taste for the dramatic aspect of the law, and to this day a _procès-verbal_ reads often like a _feuilleton_ of Ponson du Terrail. It may be supposed that, in the narratives which thus tickled the languid leisure of Louis, a rigid adherence to truth was not deemed essential where a slight embellishment enhanced the interest. But all had probably a basis in fact, which one is fain to hope was more than usually broad in so innocent and touching a history as that of Nanette Lollier, the Flower-Girl of the Palais Royal.

In the year 1740 there dwelt in the parish of St. Leu, at Paris, an honest, hard-working couple named André Lollier and Marie Jeanne Ladure, his wife; the former of whom held a subordinate position in the Bureau of Markets, while the latter attended to their fish-stand. Between them they earned ample to keep the pot boiling comfortably, had it not been for the prodigious number of small mouths that daily watered around that savory and capacious vessel; and when there came a sixteenth, it is to be feared that honest André received it rather ruefully and altogether as a discord in the harmony of existence—a blessing very much in disguise. So despite the new-comer’s beauty and precocity and countless pretty baby ways, her aggrieved parents were only too glad to accept her godmother’s offer to take her off their hands and to bring her up. By that good lady—who seems to have been really a most kind-hearted person, although she _was_ a beadle’s widow—the little Nanette (so the child had been named) was carefully instructed in such branches of learning as a young person of her station was at that time expected to know, and which, in truth, were not very many. There is little doubt that one young lady of Vassar would have put the entire faculty of St. Cyr to rout.

But Nanette was soon found to possess a fine voice, and pains were taken to cultivate it—so successfully that when, at the mature age of twelve, the youthful chorister made her _début_ in a Christmas anthem at the parish church, everybody was delighted. And when during the following Holy Week she sang a _Stabat_ better than many persons four times her age, everybody said at once she was a prodigy.

Now, we all know what comes to prodigies. The praises, pettings, and presents this prodigy received turned her small and not very wise head. Good Mère Lollier wished to make a fish-mongress of her; mademoiselle spurned the proposal. What! she, a genius, a beauty, a divine voice, waste her life on horrid, ill-smelling fish? (She made no objection, you will observe, to dining on them when her mother cooked them for her, but that was quite a different matter.) She soil her pretty fingers with scales, haggle over herrings, or dicker about dace? Perish the thought! Her mother did it, to be sure, but then—her mother was not a genius. (Do young ladies nowadays ever reason thus?) No; she would be a flower-girl and sing her nosegays into every buttonhole—or wherever else they then wore their nosegays—in Paris. The manners of the fish-market even then lacked something of the repose of Vere de Vere, and Mère Lollier’s only answer to this astounding proposal was a slap and—we regret to say—a kick. She was not aware that genius is not to be kicked with impunity. She soon discovered it to her sorrow; for in her way she loved Nanette, and kicked her, we may be sure, only in kindness.

Shortly after this affront Nanette disappeared, and from that moment all trace of her was lost. Word came to her parents from time to time that she was well, but of her whereabouts their most persistent efforts could gain no tidings. Her absence lasted three years; how or where passed no one—we sniff the touch of the embellisher here—could ever discover, nor would she herself divulge. At last one fine morning comes a message to Mère Lollier that her daughter is at the convent of the Carmelites, and will be handed over to them in person, or to any priest who comes with an order from them.

Beside herself with joy, Mère Lollier, with just a hasty touch to her cap—even a _Dame de la Halle_ is, outside of business, a woman—rushes off to M. le Curé with the great news. In those days M. le Curé was the first applied to in every emergency of joy or grief: perhaps it would have been better for Paris if the custom had not been survived by others less wholesome. The good priest lent a sympathetic ear; for the piety and industry of the Lolliers had made them prime favorites with him, and he had, besides, taken a lively interest in the fate of his little chorister. A _fiacre_ is called at once, and the _curé_ and Mère Lollier, with her eldest son, a strapping sergeant in the French guards—not then such pigmies as absinthe has left them now—fly to the convent at such a pace as only the promise of a fabulous _pourboire_ can extract from a Parisian cab-horse. The lady-superior greets them in the convent parlor and presently ushers in a lovely young girl—what! a girl?—a princess, to whom Mère Lollier with difficulty represses an inclination to courtesy, while M. le Curé wipes his spectacles and the gaping sergeant at once comes to a salute. But the princess speedily puts an end to their doubts by embracing them all in turn with the liveliest emotion. It is indeed Nanette, but Nanette developed into such beauty and grace and sprightliness as many a princess might envy. Nor is her moral nature less improved. She is now as modest and docile as before she was vain and headstrong; only—she will still be a flower-girl. And yet women are sometimes called weak!

Before the young lady’s appearance in the parlor the superior had explained to her wondering auditors how a strange lady the evening before had brought Nanette to the convent—“Hum!” says M. le Curé dubiously, taking snuff—and on leaving her had left at the same time 20,000 francs for her dowry, if she wished to become a religious—“Ha!” says M. le Curé thoughtfully, brushing away the snuff that has fallen on his band. Then he beams upon Nanette, rubbing his hands encouragingly, while Mère Lollier nods acquiescence and the sergeant shifts to the other leg and gapes. But Nanette, in spite of these diverse blandishments, respectfully but firmly declined to be a religious. Her vocation was to be a flower-girl, and a flower-girl she would be.

“’Tis the devil’s trade,” cries the _curé_, quite out of patience.

“All roads lead to heaven, my father,” answers Nanette mildly.

So a flower-girl she becomes; and it must be confessed that, in spite of Undine, beauty seems more at home with the flowers than with the fishes.

II.

One bright morning in the summer of 1756 the loungers under the chestnuts which then adorned the garden of the Palais Royal—that forehanded and long-headed (though, long as his head was, he could not keep it long) personage, Philippe Égalité, thought shops would be more ornamental as well as more useful, so he put the chestnuts in his pocket and built that splendid colonnade which is the wonder and delight of the wandering American—the loungers in the shade of the Palais Royal chestnuts were conscious of a new sensation. Not that sensations were just then going begging. By no means. One or two royal gentlemen, by laying their crowned heads together, had already contrived that famous misunderstanding which was to turn a large part of three continents into a shambles for the next seven years; to cost the “well-beloved,” in Canada and India, the brightest jewels of his crown, and to make of Montcalm, for losing one and his life with it, a hero, and of Lally-Tollendal, for having the bad taste to survive the loss of the other, a traitor or a martyr as you were for him or against him. So often is it that for precisely the same services a grateful and discriminating country decrees to one of her sons a monument, to another a halter. Perhaps there is not so much difference between the two—to the dead men, at least—as some folks imagine.

But the heroes we are to deal with are by no means of the stuff of martyrs, and fighting, beyond an ornamental pass or two in the Bois de Boulogne, they vote vulgar and _bourgeois_. Here under the chestnut blossoms is a sensation much more to their taste. It is a new flower-girl. But what a flower-girl! Figure to yourself, then, Mme. la Duchesse, a flower-girl arrayed in silks and laces and jewels a marchioness would give her head for (marchionesses’ heads were rated higher then than they came to be before the century was over), with a golden shell for her flower-basket, lined with blue satin and suspended by an embroidered scarf from the daintiest waist in the world—a flower-girl with the face of a seraph and the figure of a sylph, with eyes of liquid light and hair of woven sunshine, with the foot of Cinderella and a hand—a hand only less perfect than that of Madame, which your humble servant most respectfully salutes.

News so important must be sent post-haste to Versailles. A score of noblemen sprang to the saddle and rushed to lay their hearts and their diamonds at the feet of this strange paragon. But Nanette, young as she was, could tell base metal from good. The jewels she took from her adorers with smiling impartiality; the other sort of trinkets—sadly battered by use, it must be confessed, and not worth much at any time—she rejected with equally smiling disdain. Always gracious, gay, and self-possessed, sparkling with raillery and wit, she yet maintained a maidenly reserve that abashed the boldest license, and her reputation grew even faster than her fortune.

And the latter grew apace. She became the rage. Her appearance on the Palais Royal, followed at a little distance by footmen in livery and her maid, gathered about her straightway all the gallants and wits in Paris. Her basket was emptied in a trice, and emptied again as often as refilled by her servants. It was deemed an honor to receive a nosegay from her pretty fingers, and more louis than half-franc pieces repaid them.

Great ladies came to her _levées_—for such they really were—and even deigned to accept from the beautiful flower-girl the gift of a rose or a violet—gifts always sure to be recompensed in noble fashion with jewels or costly laces, rich silks or pieces of plate. Within two years Nanette had thus accumulated in houses, lands, and rents an annual income of forty thousand francs, besides loading her kindred with presents.

Naturally, this circumstance did not cool the ardor of the followers whom her beauty had attracted. One of these was particularly noticeable for his assiduity. He was a young man about twenty-two years old, of distinguished air and handsome features, tinged with that shadow of melancholy thought to be so irresistible to the feminine imagination. His clothes, too, were in his favor; for though irreproachably neat and faultlessly cut, they had plainly seen their best days. We all know what a sly rogue Pity is, and how untiringly he panders for a certain nameless kinsman. Every afternoon found the melancholy young man at the garden awaiting the flower-girl’s coming. On her arrival he would advance, select a flower, pay a dozen sous, exchange a word, perhaps, and disappear till the following day. Once he was absent, and the fair florist’s brow was clouded. In other words, Nanette was extremely cross, and many an unlucky _petit-maître_ was that day unmercifully snubbed for presuming on previous condescension. The garden trembled and was immersed in gloom. But presently the laggard made his appearance, Nanette’s lovely face was again wreathed in smiles, the garden breathed freely once more, and the _petit-maîtres_ were astonished to find their vapid pleasantries received more graciously than ever. From this remarkable circumstance the sagacious reader will doubtless form his own conclusion; and we do not say that the sagacious reader will be wrong.

In point of fact, we may as well admit at once that Nanette, without knowing it, was already in love with this handsome, melancholy stranger, of whom she knew nothing, except that he was noble, since he wore a sword. She would have given half she was worth to know even his name, but she dared not ask it. As often as the question trembled on her tongue she felt herself blushing violently and unable, for the life of her, to open her lips. Her modesty had not been educated away by a season in the civilizing atmosphere of the court.

Chance at last befriended her. One evening the brilliant Marquis de Louvois, after talking awhile with the unknown, came up to the Count de la Châtre, who was seated beside her, and said to him:

“This ass of a De Courtenaye puts me out of all patience. The king has asked why he does not come to Versailles. I repeat to him his majesty’s flattering question. Well! it goes in one ear and out the other. Can one so bury one’s self in Paris?”

Think of that, good Americans, before you die! In the year of grace 1756 Paris was only a burying place for Versailles! So that 1870 had a precedent.

“What else is he to do?” asks the count. “It takes money to live as we do, and his father, poor fellow, left him nothing but a name, which, although one of the first in France, is rather a drawback than otherwise, since it won’t permit him even to marry for money anything less than a princess; and rich princesses like to get as well as to give.”

“True, true,” murmurs the compassionate marquis. “I had forgotten. More’s the pity; such a good-looking fellow as he is—”

“And a connection of the royal family.”

“Faith, the king is not over and above kind to his cousins.” And the gentlemen dismiss the royal poor relation from their noble minds as they would brush a grain of snuff from their ruffles, and stroll off, humming an aria from the latest opera of the famous Favart, the little Offenbach of his little day. Forgotten art thou now, O famous Favart! and thy immortal airs are as dead as Julius Cæsar.

But not so easily did M. de Courtenaye’s tribulations pass from the mind of Nanette, who had lost not a word of this conversation. She thought of him all through a wakeful night; she was still thinking of him the next morning—having arisen for that fond purpose long before the household was stirring—when she was startled by feeling a kiss upon her arm. She sprang up with a little cry of anger and alarm; but her frown changed to a smile when she recognized the offender. It was Marcel, the handsome Marcel, her favorite brother, a year her senior, but so like her they were often mistaken for twins.

“O Marcel!” she cried, “how you frightened me. How was one to look for such gallantry from one’s brother?”

“But if one is the brother of Nanette?” says Marcel still more gallantly.

Marcel has been in good company and flatters himself he has quite the _bel air_. As an apprentice to M. Panckoucke to learn the bookseller’s trade, wherein his sister, when he got old enough, was to set him up for himself, he had many opportunities of seeing and hearing the wits of the capital, not without profit to mind and manners. Indeed, he fairly considered himself one of them already.

“Yes, my dear little sister,” he added with a patronizing air, “you are positively the talk of the town. Go where I will—and you know I go into the best circles,” he says pompously, adjusting his ruffles as he has seen the dandies do—“I hear of nothing but the beautiful, the witty Nanette. Why, it was only the other day I was at M. de Marmontel’s”—the ingenuous youth did not deem it essential to state that he had been sent in the honorable though humble capacity of “printer’s devil” with a bundle of proofs for correction (the proofs, indeed, of the _Contes Moraux_: the dullest, surely—always excepting the delightful, interminable romances of the incomparable Mlle. de Scudéry—ever penned in the tongue of Montaigne and Molière,) but his sister understood his harmless vanity and did not so much as smile—“at M. de Marmontel’s with the Duke de Nivernais, the Count de Lauraguais, M. de Voltaire, and the Prince de Courtenaye.”

Nanette started slightly, but her brother did not perceive it. It is the way of brothers, and this brother, besides, was for the moment rapt in contemplation of the greatness reflected upon him by association with these great names. He fairly grew an inch in stature as he rolled them out, dwelling fondly on the titles. It is something to have a king speak to you, if only to ask you to get out of the way. Marcel continued:

“The talk was all of you. M. de Lauraguais, not knowing me to be your near relation, presumed to deny your wit and to question your virtue.”

Nanette’s beautiful eyes flashed in a way that would have made the slanderer uncomfortable had he seen it.

“Insolent!” she murmured, clenching her little fists.