BRACTON; OR, SUB SIGILLO.

A TALE OF 1812.

BY OLIVER SLOANE.

CHAPTER XII.

MRS. BRACTON TO HELEN.

"You will sympathise with me, I feel sure, my dear Helen, in my anxieties; and it is not only an impulse, under a sense of need, that makes me pour them out to you, but a feeling of duty beside. For you ought to know, in order to communicate it to your father, that Walter has left me for England. I cannot tell you the reason, nor can I make out his plans, or where he has gone to, exactly. Something has been on his mind for a considerable time; I have not failed to note it. But you know, or can well imagine, that he has never been very communicative to me. He has lived in a world of his own, almost since our marriage, and left me to mine. This has had the melancholy advantage of obliging me to create a world of interest around me and within. Since he, the lord and master of my destiny, refuses to occupy his rightful place in the concerns of my heart, I have been forced to an alternative; I must vegetate, and simply let life slip by, or I must find a something that shall be more to me than the happy marriage that has been denied to me, while it seems to form for others an earthly paradise, however fleeting. Helen, I have found this, and found it in an increased concern about religion. Do not suppose I am ready to join yours, or have any very distinct drawing towards it. What might come hereafter, when more opportunities for thought, inquiry, and observation have been mine, I do not know, and hardly guess. I say observation, because it would weigh greatly with me to find the sublime truths delivered from the pulpits here (we have had a Lent preached to us eloquently), and which I find in books of devotion-to find all this carried out practically in the lives of those who profess to believe them. There is much in this frivolous, pleasure-seeking Naples that discourages such an expectation; much to shock me, and to revolt that sense of religious decorum in which I have been brought up. You would answer, I know-in short, what a lady with whom I have become acquainted has answered, by pointing out the differences of national temperament between these people and myself. I must tell you a little about my new friend, by the way. She is German by birth. How I wish you knew her, Helen! Married when very young, and more by her parent's wish than her own, to a man old enough to be her fatherthe Marchese di Castronuovo-whom they met on a tour from her native

Bavaria through Italy, she was left widowed and childless before she reached middle life. Her ample means she now employs in doing good in various spheres of public charity, as well as maintaining at her sole expense a large house in one of the poorer quarters of Naples, which is both orphanage and hospital for incurables. To this place she goes every day, and works there, like a true Sister of Charity. She once asked me and Edie to accompany her. Helen, I could not have imagined any one, delicately nurtured, and fastidious by nature-as I can see she is going through such menial, distasteful offices of mercy on behalf of the repulsive old people whom she has collected in that place. Oh, I can hardly describe to you what the work of those few hours was and yet her sweetness, diligence, courage-yes, that is the word! as if she had been trained among nurses in a hospital. No wonder the people seemed to worship her very shadow, as she went in and out amongst them. I felt ashamed at my own disgust-for I was on the point of fainting, and had to run out, and sit on the cold doorstep: nor could I help asking her afterwards how she could go through it. For all answer, she raised her eyes, and directed mine by a gentle reverence (her hands were busy compounding a medicine) towards a crucifix that hung on the wall of her pharmacy. I then began to understand, and have thought much of it since, I assure you. Well, we have seen a good deal of this charming person. Either the great interest she has taken in my little Edie, or her desire to do me good, or both combined, have made her give us as large a share of her time as she can spare from her devotions, and from the poor afflicted people who daily depend upon her charity.

"Having given you an outline of my new friend, I must go on to tell you what she says in answer to my difficulties.

"At this point, dear Helen, I was interrupted by the necessity of looking after my poor little Edie, whose health is giving me much anxiety. Whether she has outgrown her strength, or that this exciting air, and the new scenes amid which we live, are too much for her northern constitution, her lamp of life,' as the Neapolitan doctor expresses it, 'is burning very brightly, but too fast!' I am really alarmed about her. Sometimes she seems to show an eager restlessness about almost nothing, or nothing that I can make out at the moment. At other times, that nothing' appears to be the one thing necessary'religion. I have found her stealing away by herself to pray in a church which is close to us here, and she seems much to prefer it to her own room, though it is nearly empty, and there is no service going on. It is not an attractive place, either: small and dark, no good pictures over the altars, and very much the reverse of clean-for these blessed Neapolitans have a way of spitting over the pavement of their churches, which is simply abominable. Then, the fleas! and the heat! and the beggars at the church door, with their Signora! Signora ! date

ci quelque cosa! and the dreadful sores they show you, to elicit your charity! I am obliged to buy off the spectacle by a few paoli, and to think of the rich man and Lazarus, to enable me to endure a tithe of it. But Edie, who is generally so particular, does not seem to mind all this. Whenever she can slip away, she is to be found kneeling at the marble rails of some altar, now one, now another; and I declare to you, Helen, that when I have caught sight of her little face, gazing at what, to me, is vacancy, I have been reminded of some holy picture in one of the galleries of paintings we have lately visited.

"All this, you will say, seems to show that both my child and myself are travelling your way. But do not think it for a moment. For myself, I never could forsake the religion I was brought up inno, not even if my dear child were to show me the path-unless my understanding was convinced it was the right one, in spite of the unfavourable symptoms I have mentioned. I would rather lose the sweet communion of heart with my own Edie, which is now, next to prayer, the one solace of my life. Could it ever be a question between my child and my God? So says the marchesa also, and says it earnestly; but then, she adds- Now, I am called away, again: so, what can I do better than enclose to you her own last letter? She is absent, on some business regarding her late husband's estates in Sicily-they go to his nephew after her own death, and she is a faithful stewardess of them on his behalf, though, by all accounts, he is neither saint nor sage. She has written me several letters, but the one I send touches more closely on my objections to the whole tone of things around us here. Keep it safely for me; I would not lose it for the world. You will be amused at the little foreign turns in most of her phrases; though I must say, she writes English much better than she speaks it. Adieu, and pray for me. That, at least, there can be no harm in; though I have a shrinking fear of anyone (whose prayers are worth having) praying specially for any change in my faith. Cowardice, you would say, or a half-acknowledged sense that yours may be the right one. I hardly know; we are all mysteries to ourselves, and to each other. Here comes my little Edie, who sends you her love, and a kiss. All my fears revive at the sight of her; but no more. Pray for us both; yet why should I trust so much as I do to your prayers, if your faith is wrong? That is another puzzle to me. Good-night.

"Naples (Poste Restante), "July 11, 1812."

"Your affectionate

"LUCY.

[ENCLOSED.]

"DEAR FREUNDINN,-Our last Entretien was in so great Haste, as I was effectively on my Way to the Paquet-boat to bring me here, and you recollect yourself how my Suisse he hastened us on, on, for not to be too late, so I found no Time for more as a few Words to answer what you said, my dear, against our holy Catholique Religion. No,

again, I call that back, it was that you exposed a Difficulty in your Thought, how the Faith can be true, since in Naples and other Places of Italy you have visited, the people are so lively on Sundays, and all Days: and you think (that says, you doubt), they must not have in their Hearts the Fear or the Love of our good God:-is it not? But, my dear Freundinn, you must think this beside, that like some one who make the Bricks for Houses, should make them in differing shapes, so one this Kind, so another this Kind, that the House may be more complete and beautifuller, because that Variousness makes it more excellent, thus the Architect of the Whole has done to us and our Characters so various-ach, Heaven! what Monotonie should it be, if all we were as some many Bricks shaped in only one Making and Size. When I laugh, you are at some times earnest; when I earnest am, the Naplish Woman she laugh; that Naplish Woman, fears she our good God less, and loves Him less, because she laugh and I not laugh? She laugh at Polcinello; I think he is stupid-there, see! I get up Sunday Mornings, before the Sun himself he get up in Winter; I take my Prayersbook, I go to the Holy Mass early, so early! when you and yours little Edie have not your Curtains yet put aside. I am there in Body and my Spirit, I assist at the Sacrifice adorable of the Christ present at the Word of the Priest as He has commanded that Priest to say the great Words to call Him down on the Altar; I go forward, with Tremblement, but with so great Hope and heavenly Desire, I receive Him, the poor I! the divine Giver give me Himself into my deep Soul: I am in Heaven before I am there, I think no more Earth and World, I thank Him, long, long, on my Knees, my Book it is wettened with my thank-tears; then I go Home-(your English Word)-I take my little Chocolat or the Glass of Water, I sit to my Clavecin, I play the Beethoven. You come in-ach! so quit schoking! the Beethoven on the Sunday! He is my Language, he lifts up my soul in thanks again. My little Orphans they come in to say me the Good Day; they jump round of me, like the keys in the Clavecin; I play them a quick Air-they dance-ach, how they dance! They did assist at Holy Mass before, that Morning, and each Morning, those little Arrow-bows, so elastique, easily bent; do you wish to keep them strung up tight?— then they shall crack, yes, they shall crack! You take your Edie to your Temple upon one Sunday, when you are to the Home. You sit there, with a Face of Pain--I have seen your Sunday Faces, I: is it for a Funeral? one expects the Cadavre to come-no, it is only your Culte; Heaven! that is a Cadavre truly. You sit, with Hands before, and you listen the Preacher. Well, I am in hope it is the Chapter in that Evangelium where our Divine Saviour do rebuke the Phariseans that hushed down those little Childern with frown to not to cry Hosianna in the Temple. Now, well, Beethoven he is my Hosianna, my Orphan's Dances they are my Hosianna, they dance in front the VOL. VIII., No. 83.

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Ark; David, that holy King, he dance in front the ark-have you not read it? and did the good God frown on his dancing? did He strike David? Will He frown on my Orphan Children, when they dance, those light innocent hearts? If I see David dance, I see none the less a Window open in his House; it is a Woman's Face, she what looks out-what for a Face! it should sour all the Dairy. She love not the Dancing, that Woman, David's Wife in the Window, she has dressed her in her Sunday Gown-is she going to a Protestant temple ?—it is a Sunday Face like what I have seen, but not here in Naples, not like yours, dear Freundinn, ach, no! nor Edie's-you have two not Protestantish Faces, dear Ones-I can read the Eyes of the Neighbour, I can read yours Eyes, there is, may be, Baptism in yours Eyes-who knows? but one Time, at Munich, I see an English Face, even the Sister Face to David's Wife her Face at the Window, while she walked on one Sunday to your Ambassador's Chapel, with her Prayersbook and her Husband-but he did not dance, no-nor smile as he walked along-to hear how you call it?' Dearly Beloved Brethren'-but, ach, mine Pen, how it runs on too fast! I must tell my other Word. You think again, is it not? that in our Culte we have not enough of the Fear? Yes, yes, but there are separate Kinds of the Fear. My Cousin, Olga Georgievska (you remember yourself of her with me?) she has the Fear, ach, so great Fear, of the Russians Police, and fear of Siberia, of the Mines, where she should be taken in a Drosky if she returned to St. Petersburg. She has Fear of the terrible Knout. But will you that we would have that Fear to our Father in the Heaven? Timor non est in charitate, sed perfecta charitas foras mittit timorem: I think that you can find that in your Bible? or did they cut it out, as they cut outach, well. But what Fear, dear Freundinn, would we owe to have for Him who loves us so much so much that He bleeded for ours Sins on the Calvarien-hill? O, I have one great Fear to misplease Him, and I pray He give me more of that Fear each Day, He my heavenly Father, not the fear like Olga to the Knout, but to fear I misplease Him my Father, and make me not worthy of His Love. If you shall find Naples Catholiques, or others where they are, here or either there, who live and have no Fear to offense their Father and good God, it is not for they are Catholiques, but bad, and will go to deeper Hell at the End, if they return not out of Sin and bad Self;-and so I pray God make you and Edie, and the poor me, love Him ever the more, and never leave Him, nor either lose Him, ach, no!

"I belong to you with all my Heart, after God.

666

'AGLAE, MARCHESA DI CASTRONUOVO,
geborne von Stolzenfels.

"Taormina, Juin 28, 1812.

"We are all in Fast for To-morrow's coming Feast, but we sour not our Dairy, here under the great terrible Etna. We have no Breakfast, and we play the Beethoven.""