The Virtues groaned their sympathy with the unfortunate Fanny; and Prudence, turning to Justice, said, “I long to hear what you have been doing, for I am certain you cannot have occasioned harm to any one.”
Justice shook her head and said: “Alas! I find that there are times and places when even I do better not to appear, as a short account of my adventures will prove to you. No sooner had I left you than I instantly repaired to India, and took up my abode with a Brahmin. I was much shocked by the dreadful inequalities of condition that reigned in the several castes, and I longed to relieve the poor Pariah from his ignominious destiny; accordingly I set seriously to work on reform. I insisted upon the iniquity of abandoning men from their birth to an irremediable state of contempt, from which no virtue could exalt them. The Brahmins looked upon my Brahmin with ineffable horror. They called me the most wicked of vices; they saw no distinction between Justice and Atheism. I uprooted their society—that was sufficient crime. But the worst was, that the Pariahs themselves regarded me with suspicion; they thought it unnatural in a Brahmin to care for a Pariah! And one called me ‘Madness,’ another, ‘Ambition,’ and a third, ‘The Desire to innovate.’ My poor Brahmin led a miserable life of it; when one day, after observing, at my dictation, that he thought a Pariah’s life as much entitled to respect as a cow’s, he was hurried away by the priests and secretly broiled on the altar as a fitting reward for his sacrilege. I fled hither in great tribulation, persuaded that in some countries even Justice may do harm.”
“As for me,” said Charity, not waiting to be asked, “I grieve to say that I was silly enough to take up my abode with an old lady in Dublin, who never knew what discretion was, and always acted from impulse; my instigation was irresistible, and the money she gave in her drives through the suburbs of Dublin was so lavishly spent that it kept all the rascals of the city in idleness and whiskey. I found, to my great horror, that I was a main cause of a terrible epidemic, and that to give alms without discretion was to spread poverty without help. I left the city when my year was out, and as ill-luck would have it, just at the time when I was most wanted.”
“And oh,” cried Hospitality, “I went to Ireland also. I fixed my abode with a squireen; I ruined him in a year, and only left him because he had no longer a hovel to keep me in.”
“As for myself,” said Temperance, “I entered the breast of an English legislator, and he brought in a bill against ale-houses; the consequence was, that the labourers took to gin; and I have been forced to confess that Temperance may be too zealous when she dictates too vehemently to others.”
“Well,” said Courage, keeping more in the background than he had ever done before, and looking rather ashamed of himself, “that travelling carriage I got into belonged to a German general and his wife, who were returning to their own country. Growing very cold as we proceeded, she wrapped me up in a polonaise; but the cold increasing, I inadvertently crept into her bosom. Once there I could not get out, and from thenceforward the poor general had considerably the worst of it. She became so provoking that I wondered how he could refrain from an explosion. To do him justice, he did at last threaten to get out of the carriage; upon which, roused by me, she collared him—and conquered. When he got to his own district, things grew worse, for if any aide-de-camp offended her she insisted that he might be publicly reprimanded; and should the poor general refuse she would with her own hands confer a caning upon the delinquent. The additional force she had gained in me was too much odds against the poor general, and he died of a broken heart, six months after my liaison with his wife. She after this became so dreaded and detested, that a conspiracy was formed to poison her; this daunted even me, so I left her without delay,—et me voici!”
“Humph,” said Meekness, with an air of triumph, “I, at least, have been more successful than you. On seeing much in the papers of the cruelties practised by the Turks on the Greeks, I thought my presence would enable the poor sufferers to bear their misfortunes calmly. I went to Greece, then, at a moment when a well-planned and practicable scheme of emancipating themselves from the Turkish yoke was arousing their youth. Without confining myself to one individual, I flitted from breast to breast; I meekened the whole nation; my remonstrances against the insurrection succeeded, and I had the satisfaction of leaving a whole people ready to be killed or strangled with the most Christian resignation in the world.”
The Virtues, who had been a little cheered by the opening self-complacence of Meekness, would not, to her great astonishment, allow that she had succeeded a whit more happily than her sisters, and called next upon Modesty for her confession.
“You know,” said that amiable young lady, “that I went to London in search of a situation. I spent three months of the twelve in going from house to house, but I could not get a single person to receive me. The ladies declared that they never saw so old-fashioned a gawkey, and civilly recommended me to their abigails; the abigails turned me round with a stare, and then pushed me down to the kitchen and the fat scullion-maids, who assured me that, ‘in the respectable families they had the honour to live in, they had never even heard of my name.’ One young housemaid, just from the country, did indeed receive me with some sort of civility; but she very soon lost me in the servants’ hall. I now took refuge with the other sex, as the least uncourteous. I was fortunate enough to find a young gentleman of remarkable talents, who welcomed me with open arms. He was full of learning, gentleness, and honesty. I had only one rival,—Ambition. We both contended for an absolute empire over him. Whatever Ambition suggested, I damped. Did Ambition urge him to begin a book, I persuaded him it was not worth publication. Did he get up, full of knowledge, and instigated by my rival, to make a speech (for he was in parliament), I shocked him with the sense of his assurance, I made his voice droop and his accents falter. At last, with an indignant sigh, my rival left him; he retired into the country, took orders, and renounced a career he had fondly hoped would be serviceable to others; but finding I did not suffice for his happiness, and piqued at his melancholy, I left him before the end of the year, and he has since taken to drinking!”
The eyes of the Virtues were all turned to Prudence. She was their last hope. “I am just where I set out,” said that discreet Virtue; “I have done neither good nor harm. To avoid temptation I went and lived with a hermit to whom I soon found that I could be of no use beyond warning him not to overboil his peas and lentils, not to leave his door open when a storm threatened, and not to fill his pitcher too full at the neighbouring spring. I am thus the only one of you that never did harm; but only because I am the only one of you that never had an opportunity of doing it! In a word,” continued Prudence, thoughtfully,—“in a word, my friends, circumstances are necessary to the Virtues themselves. Had, for instance, Economy changed with Generosity, and gone to the poor lieutenant’s wife, and had I lodged with the Irish squireen instead of Hospitality, what misfortunes would have been saved to both! Alas! I perceive we lose all our efficacy when we are misplaced; and then, though in reality Virtues, we operate as Vices. Circumstances must be favourable to our exertions, and harmonious with our nature; and we lose our very divinity unless Wisdom direct our footsteps to the home we should inhabit and the dispositions we should govern.”
The story was ended, and the travellers began to dispute about its moral. Here let us leave them.
CHAPTER VII. COLOGNE.—THE TRACES OF THE ROMAN YOKE.—THE CHURCH OF ST
MARIA.—TREVYLYAN’S REFLECTIONS ON THE MONASTIC LIFE.—THE TOMB OF THE THREE KINGS.—AN EVENING EXCURSION ON THE RHINE.
ROME—magnificent Rome! wherever the pilgrim wends, the traces of thy dominion greet his eyes. Still in the heart of the bold German race is graven the print of the eagle’s claws; and amidst the haunted regions of the Rhine we pause to wonder at the great monuments of the Italian yoke.
At Cologne our travellers rested for some days. They were in the city to which the camp of Marcus Agrippa had given birth; that spot had resounded with the armed tread of the legions of Trajan. In that city, Vitellius, Sylvanus, were proclaimed emperors. By that church did the latter receive his death.
As they passed round the door they saw some peasants loitering on the sacred ground; and when they noted the delicate cheek of Gertrude they uttered their salutations with more than common respect. Where they then were the building swept round in a circular form; and at its base it is supposed by tradition to retain something of the ancient Roman masonry. Just before them rose the spire of a plain and unadorned church, singularly contrasting the pomp of the old with the simplicity of the innovating creed.
The church of St. Maria occupies the site of the Roman Capitol, and the place retains the Roman name; and still something in the aspect of the people betrays the hereditary blood.
Gertrude, whose nature was strongly impressed with the venerating character, was fond of visiting the old Gothic churches, which, with so eloquent a moral, unite the living with the dead.
“Pause for a moment,” said Trevylyan, before they entered the church of St. Maria. “What recollections crowd upon us! On the site of the Roman Capitol a Christian church and a convent are erected! By whom? The mother of Charles Martel,—the Conqueror of the Saracen, the arch-hero of Christendom itself! And to these scenes and calm retreats, to the cloisters of the convent once belonging to this church, fled the bruised spirit of a royal sufferer,-the victim of Richelieu,—the unfortunate and ambitious Mary de Medicis. Alas! the cell and the convent are but a vain emblem of that desire to fly to God which belongs to Distress; the solitude soothes, but the monotony recalls, regret. And for my own part in my frequent tours through Catholic countries, I never saw the still walls in which monastic vanity hoped to shut out the world, but a melancholy came over me! What hearts at war with themselves! what unceasing regrets! what pinings after the past! what long and beautiful years devoted to a moral grave, by a momentary rashness, an impulse, a disappointment! But in these churches the lesson is more impressive and less sad. The weary heart has ceased to ache; the burning pulses are still; the troubled spirit has flown to the only rest which is not a deceit. Power and love, hope and fear, avarice, ambition,—they are quenched at last! Death is the only monastery, the tomb is the only cell.”
“Your passion is ever for active life,” said Gertrude. “You allow no charm to solitude, and contemplation to you seems torture. If any great sorrow ever come upon you, you will never retire to seclusion as its balm. You will plunge into the world, and lose your individual existence in the universal rush of life.”
“Ah, talk not of sorrow!” said Trevylyan, wildly. “Let us enter the church.”
They went afterwards to the celebrated cathedral, which is considered one of the noblest of the architectural triumphs of Germany; but it is yet more worthy of notice from the Pilgrim of Romance than the searcher after antiquity, for here, behind the grand altar, is the Tomb of the Three Kings of Cologne,—the three worshippers whom tradition humbled to our Saviour. Legend is rife with a thousand tales of the relics of this tomb. The Three Kings of Cologne are the tutelary names of that golden superstition which has often more votaries than the religion itself from which it springs and to Gertrude the simple story of Lucille sufficed to make her for the moment credulous of the sanctity of the spot. Behind the tomb three Gothic windows cast their “dim, religious light” over the tessellated pavement and along the Ionic pillars. They found some of the more credulous believers in the authenticity of the relics kneeling before the tomb, and they arrested their steps, fearful to disturb the superstition which is never without something of sanctity when contented with prayer and forgetful of persecution. The bones of the Magi are still supposed to consecrate the tomb, and on the higher part of the monument the artist has delineated their adoration to the infant Saviour.
That evening came on with a still and tranquil beauty, and as the sun hastened to its close they launched their boat for an hour or two’s excursion upon the Rhine. Gertrude was in that happy mood when the quiet of nature is enjoyed like a bath for the soul, and the presence of him she so idolized deepened that stillness into a more delicious and subduing calm. Little did she dream as the boat glided over the water, and the towers of Cologne rose in the blue air of evening, how few were those hours that divided her from the tomb! But, in looking back to the life of one we have loved, how dear is the thought that the latter days were the days of light, that the cloud never chilled the beauty of the setting sun, and that if the years of existence were brief, all that existence has most tender, most sacred, was crowded into that space! Nothing dark, then, or bitter, rests with our remembrance of the lost: we are the mourners, but pity is not for the mourned,—our grief is purely selfish; when we turn to its object, the hues of happiness are round it, and that very love which is the parent of our woe was the consolation, the triumph, of the departed!
The majestic Rhine was calm as a lake; the splashing of the oar only broke the stillness, and after a long pause in their conversation, Gertrude, putting her hand on Trevylyan’s arm, reminded him of a promised story: for he too had moods of abstraction, from which, in her turn, she loved to lure him; and his voice to her had become a sort of want.
“Let it be,” said she, “a tale suited to the hour; no fierce tradition,—nay, no grotesque fable, but of the tenderer dye of superstition. Let it be of love, of woman’s love,—of the love that defies the grave: for surely even after death it lives; and heaven would scarcely be heaven if memory were banished from its blessings.”
“I recollect,” said Trevylyan, after a slight pause, “a short German legend, the simplicity of which touched me much when I heard it; but,” added he, with a slight smile, “so much more faithful appears in the legend the love of the woman than that of the man, that I at least ought scarcely to recite it.”
“Nay,” said Gertrude, tenderly, “the fault of the inconstant only heightens our gratitude to the faithful.”
CHAPTER VIII. THE SOUL IN PURGATORY; OR LOVE STRONGER THAN DEATH
THE angels strung their harps in heaven, and their music went up like a stream of odours to the pavilions of the Most High; but the harp of Seralim was sweeter than that of his fellows, and the Voice of the Invisible One (for the angels themselves know not the glories of Jehovah—only far in the depths of heaven they see one Unsleeping Eye watching forever over Creation) was heard saying,—
“Ask a gift for the love that burns in thy song, and it shall be given thee.” And Seralim answered,—
“There is in that place which men call Purgatory, and which is the escape from hell, but the painful porch of heaven, many souls that adore Thee, and yet are punished justly for their sins; grant me the boon to visit them at times, and solace their suffering by the hymns of the harp that is consecrated to Thee!”
And the Voice answered,—
“Thy prayer is heard, O gentlest of the angels! and it seems good to Him who chastises but from love. Go! Thou hast thy will.”
Then the angel sang the praises of God; and when the song was done he rose from his azure throne at the right hand of Gabriel, and, spreading his rainbow wings, he flew to that melancholy orb which, nearest to earth, echoes with the shrieks of souls that by torture become pure. There the unhappy ones see from afar the bright courts they are hereafter to obtain, and the shapes of glorious beings, who, fresh from these Fountains of Immortality, walk amidst the gardens of Paradise, and feel that their happiness hath no morrow; and this thought consoles amidst their torments, and makes the true difference between Purgatory and Hell.
Then the angel folded his wings, and entering the crystal gates, sat down upon a blasted rock and struck his divine lyre, and a peace fell over the wretched; the demon ceased to torture and the victim to wail. As sleep to the mourners of earth was the song of the angel to the souls of the purifying star: one only voice amidst the general stillness seemed not lulled by the angel; it was the voice of a woman, and it continued to cry out with a sharp cry,—
“Oh, Adenheim, Adenheim! mourn not for the lost!”
The angel struck chord after chord, till his most skilful melodies were exhausted; but still the solitary voice, unheeding—unconscious of—the sweetest harp of the angel choir, cried out,—
“Oh, Adenheim, Adenheim! mourn not for the lost!”
Then Seralim’s interest was aroused, and approaching the spot whence the voice came, he saw the spirit of a young and beautiful girl chained to a rock, and the demons lying idly by. And Seralim said to the demons, “Doth the song lull ye thus to rest?”
And they answered, “Her care for another is bitterer than all our torments; therefore are we idle.”
Then the angel approached the spirit, and said in a voice which stilled her cry—for in what state do we outlive sympathy?—“Wherefore, O daughter of earth, wherefore wailest thou with the same plaintive wail; and why doth the harp that soothes the most guilty of thy companions fail in its melody with thee?”
“O radiant stranger,” answered the poor spirit, “thou speakest to one who on earth loved God’s creature more than God; therefore is she thus justly sentenced. But I know that my poor Adenheim mourns ceaselessly for me, and the thought of his sorrow is more intolerable to me than all that the demons can inflict.”
“And how knowest thou that he laments thee?” asked the angel.
“Because I know with what agony I should have mourned for him,” replied the spirit, simply.
The divine nature of the angel was touched; for love is the nature of the sons of heaven. “And how,” said he, “can I minister to thy sorrow?”
A transport seemed to agitate the spirit, and she lifted up her mistlike and impalpable arms, and cried,—
“Give me—oh, give me to return to earth, but for one little hour, that I may visit my Adenheim; and that, concealing from him my present sufferings, I may comfort him in his own.”
“Alas!” said the angel, turning away his eyes,—for angels may not weep in the sight of others,—“I could, indeed, grant thee this boon, but thou knowest not the penalty. For the souls in Purgatory may return to Earth, but heavy is the sentence that awaits their return. In a word, for one hour on earth thou must add a thousand years to the torture of thy confinement here!”
“Is that all?” cried the spirit. “Willingly then will I brave the doom. Ah, surely they love not in heaven, or thou wouldst know, O Celestial Visitant; that one hour of consolation to the one we love is worth a thousand ages of torture to ourselves! Let me comfort and convince my Adenheim; no matter what becomes of me.”
Then the angel looked on high, and he saw in far distant regions, which in that orb none else could discern, the rays that parted from the all-guarding Eye; and heard the VOICE of the Eternal One bidding him act as his pity whispered. He looked on the spirit, and her shadowy arms stretched pleadingly towards him; he uttered the word that loosens the bars of the gate of Purgatory; and lo, the spirit had re-entered the human world.
It was night in the halls of the lord of Adenheim, and he sat at the head of his glittering board. Loud and long was the laugh, and merry the jest that echoed round; and the laugh and the jest of the lord of Adenheim were louder and merrier than all. And by his right side sat a beautiful lady; and ever and anon he turned from others to whisper soft vows in her ear.
“And oh,” said the bright dame of Falkenberg, “thy words what ladye can believe? Didst thou not utter the same oaths, and promise the same love, to Ida, the fair daughter of Loden, and now but three little months have closed upon her grave?”
“By my halidom,” quoth the young lord of Adenheim, “thou dost thy beauty marvellous injustice. Ida! Nay, thou mockest me; I love the daughter of Loden! Why, how then should I be worthy thee? A few gay words, a few passing smiles,—behold all the love Adenheim ever bore to Ida. Was it my fault if the poor fool misconstrued such common courtesy? Nay, dearest lady, this heart is virgin to thee.”
“And what!” said the lady of Falkenberg, as she suffered the arm of Adenheim to encircle her slender waist, “didst thou not grieve for her loss?”
“Why, verily, yes, for the first week; but in thy bright eyes I found ready consolation.”
At this moment, the lord of Adenheim thought he heard a deep sigh behind him; he turned, but saw nothing, save a slight mist that gradually faded away, and vanished in the distance. Where was the necessity for Ida to reveal herself?
.......
“And thou didst not, then, do thine errand to thy lover?” said Seralim, as the spirit of the wronged Ida returned to Purgatory.
“Bid the demons recommence their torture,” was poor Ida’s answer.
“And was it for this that thou added a thousand years to thy doom?”
“Alas!” answered Ida, “after the single hour I have endured on Earth, there seems to be but little terrible in a thousand fresh years of Purgatory!”7
“What! is the story ended?” asked Gertrude.
“Yes.”
“Nay, surely the thousand years were not added to poor Ida’s doom; and Seralim bore her back with him to Heaven?”
“The legend saith no more. The writer was contented to show us the perpetuity of woman’s love—”
“And its reward,” added Vane.
“It was not I who drew that last conclusion, Albert,” whispered Gertrude.