The spirit-rapper; an autobiography
filled with his love, of reposing in the arms of all-sufficing charity,
stimulates onward from grace to grace, and from one degree of perfection
to another. Though he finds not yet perfect repose, though he is not yet
filled, though he has not yet attained, yet he is upheld, buoyed up and
onward by the sure promise, the steadfast hope of attaining, of at last
finding repose, rest in the bosom of his love and his God. He may feel
the clogs of flesh, he may feel that he is absent from his love, and
sigh to reach his home and embrace the spouse of his soul, but he grows
not weary, faints not, and knows nothing of the _ennui_, that
listlessness of spirit, that disgust of life, and disrelish for every
pursuit, which he feels who has no object, no hope, and sees not even in
the most distant future any chance of finding that fulness and repose
which his soul never ceases in this life to crave. In losing sight of
God as final cause, in losing the hope of possessing God as the supreme
good, in substituting endless progression for endless beatitude, full
and complete, I had lost all stimulus to exertion, all motive to exert
myself for any thing.
Why should I act? What had I to gain? Money I did not want; I had more
than I could use. Fame I despised. It was a mere word, born and dying in
the very sound that made it. Power, I had it. If I had more, it could
procure me nothing more than I already possessed. Pleasures? The richest
dishes and the most precious wines palled upon my taste. There remained
another kind of pleasure; but we can even grow weary of women, and
loathe what the morbid senses continue to crave. Still nothing else
remained for me. Yet I had outlived love in any virtuous or innocent
sense of the word, and early training, and some remains of self-respect,
made any other love far more of a torment than a pleasure.
The simple truth was, that I could reconcile myself neither to the
philosophy of the Portico nor the philosophy of the Garden, and was
alike disgusted with the Cynics and the Academicians. I was a man, and
could not live on air, or feed on garbage; I had a soul, and could not
satisfy it by living for the body alone, and having no God, no heaven,
no hope of beatitude, and no fear of hell, I saw nothing to seek,
nothing to gain, and I could only exclaim, _Vanitas vanitatum, et omnia
vanitas_. I could not say, with young and thoughtless sinners, in the
heyday of their youth, and the full flow of their animal spirits,—“Come
on, therefore, and let us enjoy the good things that are present, let us
use the creatures as in youth. Let us fill ourselves with costly wine
and ointments, and let not the flower of the spring pass by us. Let us
crown ourselves with roses before they be withered, and let no meadow
escape our riot. Let none of us go without his part in voluptuousness,
and let us leave tokens of our joy in every place, for this is our
portion and our lot.” For of all vanities I had learned that this was
the most empty. Even the devil himself is said to loathe the sensualist,
and to find his stench intolerable. Still Priscilla—I had lost her
perhaps. That touched my pride. We often grieve that lost, which
possessed, was not valued.
CHAPTER XVII.
A GLEAM OF HOPE.
I had not seen Priscilla for over a year, and had struggled hard against
the madness that possessed me. Finding myself out of work, having
completed what I had undertaken, as far as depended on me, I felt that
passion, which I even loathed, reviving within me. Nothing would do but
I must see my former accomplice again. I called as an old friend, and
this time found her alone. She received me with ease, grace, and
cordiality.
There are those who believe that a woman who has once lost even the
modesty and chastity of thought, can never regain them, and become a
truly modest and pure-minded woman. They are greatly mistaken. The
Magdalene had fallen lower than that, and yet those were pure tears with
which she washed our Lord’s feet, and but one purer heart than hers beat
in the breasts of those holy women who stood near the cross, and heard
the loud cry of the God-Man, as he bowed his head and consummated the
world’s redemption. The Fountain, which that rude soldier opened with
his spear that day, suffices to cleanse from the deepest filth, to wash
away the foulest stains, and to make clean and fragrant the most
polluted soul. O ye fallen ones, whether women or men, bathe in that
fountain! and if your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as
snow, and if they be red as crimson, they shall be white as wool.
I had never seen Priscilla more beautiful. The bloom had returned to her
cheek; her form had regained its roundness, and her complexion its
richness. Her eyes were serene and tranquil, and her countenance wore a
sweet, pure, and peaceful expression. She had no need to fear me at that
moment, for I stood, not repelled, but awed, and felt myself in the
presence of virtue, not haughty, austere, and repellant, but lovely,
chaste, and affectionate; natural, easy, and wholly unconscious of
itself.
“I am glad to see you, Doctor,” said she, with a sweet smile. “Sit down.
I have been hoping that you would call, but I was afraid that you had
entirely deserted us.”
“You are changed, Priscilla, since I last saw you; and I should think my
presence would now be even more disagreeable than then.”
“Not at all. I was never more glad to see you in my life, and I never
met you with kinder or more pleasant feelings.”
I did not understand this speech, and began to draw, in my own mind,
certain very foolish conclusions.
“Yes,” she resumed, “I wished to see you, and to see you as I now do,
alone. It is of no use referring to what we were for so many years to
each other; but I wanted to tell you that I did you no little wrong. You
were not innocent, but I was the most guilty. We were both miserable;
and you, you, my dear friend, are unhappy still.”
“I make no complaint. Nobody has heard me whine or whimper over my own
lot. If I have suffered, I have done so in silence.”
“That may be. But you have not forgotten our sojourn at Rome in the
winter of 1848-49?”
“Forgotten it? no, and shall not, as long as I live.”
“Do you remember an old Franciscan monk, that my husband concealed in
our house for some weeks?”
“I do.”
“He was an old man, nearly fourscore. His head was almost perfectly
bald, only a few gray hairs escaped from beneath his _calotte_, and
partially shaded his temples; his form, which had been tall and manly,
was now bent with years, labors, and mortifications; but his feelings
seemed as fresh and playful as those of a child; and the expression of
his face was calm, sweet, and affectionate. It was a peculiar
expression, not often met with, but like that which, you may remember,
we one day remarked in the face of Pius the Ninth. It was an expression
of exceeding peace and celestial love, of a pure and holy soul shining
through a pure and chaste body. The expression is indescribable, but
once seen, can never be forgotten, and seems to be that which Italian
painters seek to give to their saints, especially to the Madonna.
“This venerable old man had, as you may recollect, been denounced, by
the Circulo del Populo, as an obscurantist, an enemy to the republic,
and an adherent to the Pontifical authority. It was intended to include
him in the number of priests and religious massacred at San Callisto. My
husband had formed an acquaintance with him, and, having learned his
danger, smuggled him into our house, where it was presumed nobody would
think of looking for a proscribed priest.”
“I remember him; I did not at all like him, and, had I cared much about
him, would have betrayed him to the Club; for I had the wish of Voltaire
in my heart, that ‘the last king might be strangled with the guts of the
last priest.’ But, as he seemed old and harmless, and generally kept out
of my way, I let him pass.”
“He was a quiet, inoffensive man, and I own I was not sorry that he
should escape the cruel death to which philanthropists and sworn friends
of liberty doomed so many of his brethren. I was not cruel by nature,
and my soul recoiled from the part I was often compelled to take. I
thought it was hardly consistent for us, who advocated unbounded freedom
of thought and action, to send the dagger to the heart, or coolly sever
the carotid artery in the neck of those who chose to think and act
differently from us; but I was held then by a force I could not resist.”
“You mean, Priscilla, now to reproach me.”
“No, my friend, no; I reproach only myself. Had I not originally
consented, no power could have held me in that terrible thraldom. The
agents you employed have no such power over us against our will; though,
when we have once assented to their dominion, it is not always in our
own power alone to reassert our liberty. My husband grew very fond of
the venerable old man, and they spent hours, and even days, together.
What was the subject of their conversation, I knew not, and did not
inquire.
“You returned to Paris, to prevent, if possible, the French from
interfering to suppress the Roman Republic, by organizing a new
insurrection of the Subterraneans, and by reminding the Prince-President
of his previous republican and socialistic professions, and making it
evident to him that the reëstablishment of the Pope would be fatal to
the supremacy of the state, whether republican or imperial. During your
absence you left me tranquil, and I began, for the first time since my
marriage, to enjoy the sweets and tranquillity of domestic life. The
good Franciscan would sometimes spend an evening with me and my husband.
He was of a childlike simplicity, and of most winning manners, but a man
of a cultivated mind, extensive information, and various and profound
erudition. He discoursed much on the old Roman Republic and Empire, on
the grasping ambition and tyranny of the government, the hollowness of
the Roman virtues and the old Roman people, the cruel and impure nature
of their religion, and the looseness and profligacy of their manners.
“He sketched then the introduction of Christianity, showed what enemies
it had to encounter, why it was opposed, the change it introduced into
the moral and social life of the people, its triumphs over paganism, its
conversion and civilization of the northern barbarians, and the
chastity, peace, and happiness it had introduced into the cottage of the
peasant, the castle of the noble, and even the palace of the monarch.
His views seemed clear and precise, and his mind seemed to be
enlightened, and singularly free from the cant of his profession, and
from that credulity, ignorance, and superstition which you and I had
been accustomed to associate with the name of monk. To every question I
asked, he had a clear and intelligent answer; and he was always able to
give a reason, and what appeared a good reason, for whatever judgment he
hazarded. He was evidently a man of an order of intellect, ideas, and
culture entirely different from any that had fallen under my
observation; and I must own that when I listened to him, I was charmed.
I seemed to be under the gentle but superior influence of a good spirit.
I felt calm and tranquil, and I wished that I too might believe, be
pure, holy, a Christian like him.
“Weeks passed on. At length we had a chance to send him in safety to
Portici, where the Holy Father then held his court. The evening before
he was to leave us, he came into the sitting-room, and sat down by me.
‘My dear lady,’ said he, ‘I leave you to-morrow, and I shall not see you
after to-night. You must permit me to thank you for your kindness to the
poor old proscribed monk, and your evident desire to procure him