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le Cardinal Wiseman, comme Fénélon, comme Camus.'* says, and says it with perfect truth, that the story is in his hands the simple thread upon which his facts are strung. No one, indeed, could mistake him for a novelist; for from the merits and the defects of that peculiar form of literature, he is almost equally free. There is no sensational writing in any page of these volumes; and there is, on the other hand, very little story. It is not with him, as it is with Dr. Mason Neale, that the intensity of his religious convictions hardly keeps down the natural genius of a master of fiction; he has no such struggle: he labours with his story to make it hold his facts and reasonings; and it does that, and does no more. From the beginning the most inexpert tyro in novel reading can see what the end is to be, and he is never deceived in the unwinding of the thread. If there is any surprise anywhere, it is evidently quite as great a one to the author, as it is to the reader. All this, which would take utterly away any claim that he might put forth to high place amongst the writers of fiction, only adds to the value of his volumes as a statement of the facts which constitute the spiritual life of which he is recording the history. There is no story, the interest of which must be kept alive by humouring these facts; there is no evidence of lively imagination, which might lead unawares to their being invested with a colour of his own. Any careful student of history, who has followed closely Lord Macaulay's treatment of Sir Elijah Impey, or the Duke of Marlborough, will distrust all his other portraits, because he will know that it is the habit of the artist's mind to form for himself the countenance he is about to depict; but the purchaser of the work of the dullest photographer knows that he is at least free from these misleading freaks of the imagination. That security the reader of these volumes possesses.

Not that the Abbé M. is by any means a dull man; but he manifests no such gifts of imagination as would lead us in any degree to distrust his facts. Le Maudit,' which first created the author's reputation, and of which many large editions have been sold, opens with the history of a young priest in the south of France, well-born, well-nurtured, and endowed with unusual gifts of intellect-Julio de la Clavière-who, with his (supposed) sister, Louise de la Clavière, had been brought up by an aunt, who had adopted the orphan children, and been to them all that a mother could have been.

The opening chapters depict the dealings of the Jesuit Fathers with the ladies of the family. Madame de la Clavière was rich,

* Le Maudit,' p. 2.

and

and her nephew and niece her natural heirs. She had yielded herself to the guidance of a Jesuit confessor, and he, at the bidding of the Company, was bent on securing for it the worldly substance of the devoted trembling aunt. To secure this the niece was to be persuaded to enter a convent, and the nephew to become a priest. In these vocations a small pension would be all that either would require, and the Company might win the inheritance. These plans are first thwarted by the niece's doubts about her vocation, which, under an attachment she forms for a young friend of her brother's, preparing at first with him for the priesthood, but led by doubts and inquiry to abandon that intention and become an advocate, deepen rapidly into an absolute rejection of the state for which she had been designed. This provoking mischance is traced, in great measure, by the sharpsighted Fathers to the influence of her brother, who himself has read, and has encouraged her in reading, many works which have carried her thoughts, and interests, and aspirations, far outside the narrow sphere to which her spiritual guides would have restricted them. Thus he becomes early an object of suspicion and dislike to the 'Reverend Fathers.' They were at this time only feeling their way in the provincial town of T.; and it was esteemed by them essential to their success that they should obtain funds sufficient to enable them to raise buildings commensurate with the importance of the Society. France was the country for the support of which they were by far the most anxious. In their estimate, Rome est aujourd'hui dans la décrépitude senile: la vie ne part pas de là, pas plus pour la religion que pour le reste. La France c'est la pays de vie exuberante.' (p. 56.)

To secure the funds needful for erecting these buildings, all their spiritual powers were unscrupulously exerted. We are led by the Abbé into the dark conclave in which business of this delicate kind is conducted :

"The Provincial Father had convoked a secret council. When darkness reigned in every corridor, and the dead silence of the building showed that all the other Fathers had retired into their cells, seven old men entered the convent hall. A single lamp lighted that hall, casting a pale and lurid ray upon the walls. Here and there hung engravings of St. Ignatius, of St. Francis Xavier, of the martyrdom of the brethren in Japan and China, and of the Sacred Heart of Mary. . . . . A table covered with green cloth, and chairs for the assembled Fathers, completed the furniture of the room. . . . . The Reverend Father Provincial, having deposited on the table a large portfolio, knelt down and repeated in a slow and subdued tone the Veni Sancte and Ave Maria, the other Fathers joining. They then rose and seated themselves. All

eyes

eyes were fixed upon the ground as the Provincial began by opening his portfolio and stating, "I have received from our very Reverend Father General authority to build at T. a house for our order."

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He proceeds to state that three million francs must be raised for the building, and raised from local resources. A subdued smile courses over some of those aged lips, as the question is put from whence the needful funds are to come. It appears that all their means of every kind reach to little more than half what they require, and so the several Fathers who act as confessors are stirred up to use more energetically their power over those whom they direct. Whilst each one details his own failures or successes in the common cause, the Father Briffard, with whom we are specially concerned, called upon by the Provincial Father to state his success, produces with a smile of satisfaction, which plays over his lips, the will of Madame de la Clavière, by which, securing pensions of a thousand francs to her nephew and her niece respectively, and one of three hundred to a favourite servant, she leaves all her estate to a Mons. Tournichon, the safe creature of the Company. And to what,' the Provincial asks, 'does' this amount?' 'It is valued,' is the reply, at four hundred and fifty thousand francs.' And will the donor die soon?' he responds, and receives the gratifying assurance that she has scarcely a breath of life left in her. The Virgin is thanked in concluding prayers (pp. 57-68) for these special favours, and the commencement of the building is determined on.

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It had not been without a struggle that the aged aunt had handed over the orphans' fortune to these grasping hands. 'Remorse,' she had avowed to her confessor, and deep disquietude possess me! Louise and her brother are directly my heirs. Can I in conscience disinherit these children of my own and of their uncle's fortune?' 'Yes,' is the answer; 'I have certain means of knowing that the uncle's fortune was amassed by usury.' But how? his reputation for honesty was perfect.' What matters that; for his unjust gains he is now burning in Purgatory, and your only mode of giving peace to his soul, and saving your own, is by thus making restitution.' Ah, but those poor children!' The sacrifice is urged upon her as most acceptable to God; the fainting heart of the old devotee yields with difficulty; but the will is extorted from her (pp. 12-15).

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Here is laid the foundation of a lifelong persecution of Julio de la Clavière, who at first suspects, and afterwards opposes to the utmost, though in vain, in the courts of law his own and his sister's spoliation. The Cardinal Archbishop Flamarens, one of the best drawn portraits in the book, touched with a play of

humour

humour which is the Abbe's forte, gives the true solution of all the life that is to follow, in the few words with which he replies to the objections taken to the ordination of Julio, 'I understand it all; they have robbed him of his fortune, and now they persecute him' (p. 89).

The persecution begins with the endeavour to prevent by secret slander his admission to the priesthood: next it seeks to prevent his appointment by the Archbishop, who is captivated with his whole manner and attainments, to the office of diocesan secretary. The Archbishop, however, is firm, and the entrance of the young man on his new office introduces a capitally executed passage describing the daily budget of a French Archbishop's letters from his diocese, and the treatment by a kind and skilful, though perhaps a slightly worldly hand, of the various cases of his clergy. This chapter might be read with great advantage by many besides French Archbishops. It exhibits with the utmost skill how much acute discernment, mixed with hearty kindness, may do to quiet extremes without the scandal of a scene, to forestal coming evils in their bud, and to stir up sleepy respectability to exertions of which it had never dreamed. this time the young Abbé seems to triumph, and the astute Fathers to have failed. He is called upon to preach in the Cathedral, and acquits himself so admirably, that at the request of the Chapter he is nominated by the Archbishop an honorary canon of the church. But the Jesuits never leave the prey they once have tracked. They stir up a cry of heresy against the young canon's sermon, and they play off against the Archbishop his chaplain, and above all, his sister who lives with him, and on whom he is dependent for his family and social life; a scene of unusual altercation disturbs his dinner-table; he retires to his room, to be followed by a fierce letter of denunciation, which he traces to the Jesuits, and is seized in his overwrought condition with a fit of apoplexy under which he sinks. Before his death he sends for Julio, to receive his confession, and in the clear atmosphere of those last hours, when one by one the busy illusions of life have all but passed away, the spirit of the dying man rises to the perception of the greatness of the Church's vocation and his own, and he delivers to the young Abbé what is appropriately termed his 'spiritual testament':

'I die in the bosom of the Catholic Church Apostolical and Roman, of which I have been Priest, Bishop, and Cardinal: about to appear before Him who is the immutable truth, I declare that it has been against the dictates of my own heart, and with an extreme repugnance, that for more than forty years of my life as priest and bishop I have followed the perilous crew which now guides the Catholic

Church

Church. I have been forced to repress all the holiest instincts of my soul and to this I have owed my rapid advance in honours. I saw that I must choose between the dignities which flattered my ambition and an agitated, even persecuted, life. I was feeble, and I shrank back from the glory and the sufferings of the new apostolate. I preferred the vain glory of the purple: to reach it I betrayed and slew the truth.'-p. 188.

He sees how the Ultramontane party, directed by the Jesuits, and in everything exalting the Papacy above the Scriptures, the Creeds, and the Church, is destroying all possibility of a religious future for the French people; and he dies penitent for his own share in the mighty evil which has been already wrought. He charges Julio to make his retractations known: gives him as a perpetual pledge his Cardinal's ring, and dies with the adieu of a father leaving his troubled inheritance to a beloved son.

To prevent the publication of this last 'testament' of the Archbishop, which Julio at once sets about preparing, is the first care of the reverend Fathers. All direct threats and cajolery having failed utterly, they turn, according to their wont, to female aid, and bring his aged aunt and his adored sister to persuade him to abandon his intention of making public the revelation to which he had pledged himself to the dying Archbishop. All that can be won from him is that it is published without his name by his friend the advocate M. Verdelon. The sale of the brochure is immense, and the anger of the Jesuits proportionate to the injury they perceive that it will do them. Meanwhile the new Archbishop, Mons. Paul le Cricq, appears on the stage, and Julio soon feels the effect of the loss of his former patron. The new Archbishop, indeed, hates and fears the Jesuits; but fearing even more than he hates, he serves them with the grudged but thorough service which fear can extract from an ignoble spirit. His object is to gain the purple as well as the archiepiscopal mitre of his predecessor. To obtain this he must secure two separate influences which it is not easy for him to combine. He must have the support of the French Government and the nomination of the Pope, and this latter cannot be won unless with the assistance of the Jesuits. Side by side with the lofty throne of the successor of St. Peter is erected the chair of office of the General of the Jesuits.

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There are two kings in the Catholic monarchy. . . . . One is the king in appearance, and is named the Pope: he is enthroned at the Vatican, with cardinals, chamberlains, prelates, guards. . . . The other is the actual king; his seat is at the Gesù; he is styled "the General of the Jesuits." He is at the head of the most compact, active, and powerful association of men which the genius of man has ever framed. Vol. 118.-No. 236.

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