Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861

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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. VIII.--JULY, 1861.--NO. XLV.

OUR ORDERS.

Weave no more silks, ye Lyons looms,
To deck our girls for gay delights!
The crimson flower of battle blooms,
And solemn marches fill the nights.

Weave but the flag whose bars to-day
Drooped heavy o'er our early dead,
And homely garments, coarse and gray,
For orphans that must earn their bread!

Keep back your tunes, ye viols sweet,
That pour delight from other lands!
Rouse there the dancer's restless feet,--
The trumpet leads our warrior bands.

And ye that wage the war of words
With mystic fame and subtle power,
Go, chatter to the idle birds,
Or teach the lesson of the hour!

Ye Sibyl Arts, in one stern knot
Be all your offices combined!
Stand close, while Courage draws the lot,
The destiny of humankind!

And if that destiny could fail,
The sun should darken in the sky,
The eternal bloom of Nature pale,
And God, and Truth, and Freedom die!

AGNES OF SORRENTO.

CHAPTER VII.

THE DAY AT THE CONVENT.

The Mother Theresa sat in a sort of withdrawing-room, the roof of which
rose in arches, starred with blue and gold like that of the cloister,
and the sides were frescoed with scenes from the life of the Virgin.
Over every door, and in convenient places between the paintings, tests
of Holy Writ were illuminated in blue and scarlet and gold, with a
richness and fancifulness of outline, as if every sacred letter had
blossomed into a mystical flower. The Abbess herself, with two of her
nuns, was busily embroidering a new altar-cloth, with a lavish profusion
of adornment; and, from time to time, their voices rose in the musical
tones of an ancient Latin hymn. The words were full of that quaint
and mystical pietism with which the fashion of the times clothed the
expression of devotional feeling:--

"Jesu, corona virginum,
Quem mater illa concepit,
Quae sola virgo parturit,
Haec vota clemens accipe.

"Qui pascis inter lilia
Septus choreis virginum,
Sponsus decoris gloria
Sponsisque reddens praemia.

"Quocunque pergis, virgines
Sequuntur atque laudibus
Post te canentes cursitant
Hymnosque dulces personant[A]."

[Footnote A:

"Jesus, crown of virgin spirits,
Whom a virgin mother bore,
Graciously accept our praises
While thy footsteps we adore.

"Thee among the lilies feeding
Choirs of virgins walk beside,
Bridegroom crowned with glorious beauty
Giving beauty to thy bride.

"Where thou goest still they follow
Singing, singing as they move,
All those souls forever virgin
Wedded only to thy love."]

This little canticle was, in truth, very different from the hymns
to Venus which used to resound in the temple which the convent had
displaced. The voices which sang were of a deep, plaintive contralto,
much resembling the richness of a tenor, and us they moved in modulated
waves of chanting sound the effect was soothing and dreamy. Agnes
stopped at the door to listen.

"Stop, dear Jocunda," she said to the old woman, who was about to push
her way abruptly into the room, "wait till it is over."

Jocunda, who was quite matter-of-fact in her ideas of religion, made a
little movement of impatience, but was recalled to herself by observing
the devout absorption with which Agnes, with clasped hands and downcast
head, was mentally joining in the hymn with a solemn brightness in her
young face.

"If she hasn't got a vocation, nobody ever had one," said Jocunda,
mentally. "Deary me, I wish I had more of one myself!"

When the strain died away, and was succeeded by a conversation on the
respective merits of two kinds of gold embroidering-thread, Agnes and
Jocunda entered the apartment. Agnes went forward and kissed the hand of
the Mother reverentially.

Sister Theresa we have before described as tall, pale, and sad-eyed,--a
moonlight style of person, wanting in all those elements of warm color
and physical solidity which give the impression of a real vital human
existence. The strongest affection she had ever known had been that
which had been excited by the childish beauty and graces of Agnes, and
she folded her in her arms and kissed her forehead with a warmth that
had in it the semblance of maternity.

"Grandmamma has given me a day to spend with you, dear mother," said
Agnes.

"Welcome, dear little child!" said Mother Theresa. "Your spiritual home
always stands open to you."

"I have something to speak to you of in particular, my mother," said
Agnes, blushing deeply.

"Indeed!" said the Mother Theresa, a slight movement of curiosity
arising in her mind as she signed to the two nuns to leave the
apartment.

"My mother," said Agnes, "yesterday evening, as grandmamma and I were
sitting at the gate, selling oranges, a young cavalier came up and
bought oranges of me, and he kissed my forehead and asked me to pray for
him, and gave me this ring for the shrine of Saint Agnes."

"Kissed your forehead!" said Jocunda, "here's a pretty go! it isn't like
you, Agnes, to let him."

"He did it before I knew," said Agnes. "Grandmamma reproved him, and
then he seemed to repent, and gave this ring for the shrine of Saint
Agnes."

"And a pretty one it is, too," said Jocunda. "We haven't a prettier in
all our treasury. Not even the great emerald the Queen gave is better in
its way than this."

"And he asked you to pray for him?" said Mother Theresa.

"Yes, mother dear; he looked right into my eyes and made me look into
his, and made me promise;--and I knew that holy virgins never refused
their prayers to any one that asked, and so I followed their example."

"I'll warrant me he was only mocking at you for a poor little fool,"
said Jocunda; "the gallants of our day don't believe much in prayers."

"Perhaps so, Jocunda," said Agnes, gravely; "but if that be the case, he
needs prayers all the more."

"Yes," said Mother Theresa. "Remember the story of the blessed Saint
Dorothea,--how a wicked young nobleman mocked at her, when she was going
to execution, and said, 'Dorothea, Dorothea, I will believe, when you
shall send me down some of the fruits and flowers of Paradise'; and she,
full of faith, said, 'To-day I will send them'; and, wonderful to tell,
that very day, at evening, an angel came to the young man with a basket
of citrons and roses, and said, 'Dorothea sends thee these, wherefore
believe.' See what grace a pure maiden can bring to a thoughtless young
man,--for this young man was converted and became a champion of the
faith."

"That was in the old times," said Jocunda, skeptically. "I don't believe
setting the lamb to pray for the wolf will do much in our day. Prithee,
child, what manner of man was this gallant?"

"He was beautiful as an angel," said Agnes, "only it was not a good
beauty. He looked proud and sad, both,--like one who is not at ease in
his heart. Indeed, I feel very sorry for him; his eyes made a kind of
trouble in my mind, that reminds me to pray for him often."

"And I will join my prayers to yours, dear daughter," said the Mother
Theresa; "I long to have you with us, that we may pray together every
day;--say, do you think your grandmamma will spare you to us wholly
before long?"

"Grandmamma will not hear of it yet," said Agnes; "and she loves me so,
it would break her heart, if I should leave her, and she could not be
happy here;--but, mother, you have told me we could carry an altar
always in our hearts, and adore in secret. When it is God's will I
should come to you, He will incline her heart."

"Between you and me, little one," said Jocunda, "I think there will soon
be a third person who will have something to say in the case."

"Whom do you mean?" said Agnes.

"A husband," said Jocunda; "I suppose your grandmother has one picked
out for you. You are neither humpbacked nor cross-eyed, that you
shouldn't have one as well as other girls."

"I don't want one, Jocunda; and I have promised to Saint Agnes to come
here, if she will only get grandmother to consent."

"Bless you, my daughter!" said Mother Theresa; "only persevere and the
way will be opened."

"Well, well," said Jocunda, "we'll see. Come, little one, if you
wouldn't have your flowers wilt, we must go back and look after them."

Reverently kissing the hand of the Abbess, Agnes withdrew with her old
friend, and crossed again to the garden to attend to her flowers.

"Well now, childie," said Jocunda, "you can sit here and weave your
garlands, while I go and look after the conserves of raisins and citrons
that Sister Cattarina is making. She is stupid at anything but her
prayers, is Cattarina. Our Lady be gracious to me! I think I got my
vocation from Saint Martha, and if it wasn't for me, I don't know what
would become of things in the Convent. Why, since I came here, our
conserves, done up in fig-leaf packages, have had quite a run at Court,
and our gracious Queen herself was good enough to send an order for a
hundred of them last week. I could have laughed to see how puzzled the
Mother Theresa looked;--much she knows about conserves! I suppose she
thinks Gabriel brings them straight down from Paradise, done up in
leaves of the tree of life. Old Jocunda knows what goes to their making
up; she's good for something, if she is old and twisted; many a scrubby
old olive bears fat berries," said the old portress, chuckling.

"Oh, dear Jocunda," said Agnes, "why must you go this minute? I want to
talk with you about so many things!"

"Bless the sweet child! it does want its old Jocunda, does it?" said the
old woman, in the tone with which one caresses a baby. "Well, well, it
should, then! Just wait a minute, till I go and see that our holy Saint
Cattarina hasn't fallen a-praying over the conserving-pan. I'll be back
in a moment."

So saying, she hobbled off briskly, and Agnes, sitting down on the
fragment sculptured with dancing nymphs, began abstractedly pulling her
flowers towards her, shaking from them the dew of the fountain.

Unconsciously to herself, as she sat there, her head drooped into the
attitude of the marble nymph, and her sweet features assumed the same
expression of plaintive and dreamy thoughtfulness; her heavy dark lashes
lay on her pure waxen cheeks like the dark fringe of some tropical
flower. Her form, in its drooping outlines, scarcely yet showed the full
development of womanhood, which after-years might unfold into the ripe
fulness of her countrywomen. Her whole attitude and manner were those of
an exquisitively sensitive and highly organized being, just struggling
into the life of some mysterious new inner birth,--into the sense of
powers of feeling and being hitherto unknown even to herself.

"Ah," she softly sighed to herself, "how little I am! how little I can
do! Could I convert one soul! Ah, holy Dorothea, send down the roses of
heaven into his soul, that he also may believe!"

"Well, my little beauty, you have not finished even one garland," said
the voice of old Jocunda, bustling up behind her. "Praise to Saint
Martha, the conserves are doing well, and so I catch a minute for my
little heart."

So saying, she sat down with her spindle and flax by Agnes, for an
afternoon gossip.

"Dear Jocunda, I have heard you tell stories about spirits that haunt
lonesome places. Did you ever hear about any in the gorge?"

"Why, bless the child, yes,--spirits are always pacing up and down in
lonely places. Father Anselmo told me that; and he had seen a priest
once that had seen that in the Holy Scriptures themselves,--so it must
be true."

"Well, did you ever hear of their making the most beautiful music?"

"Haven't I?" said Jocunda,--"to be sure I have,--singing enough to draw
the very heart out of your body,--it's an old trick they have. Why, I
want to know if you never heard about the King of Amalfi's son coming
home from fighting for the Holy Sepulchre? Why, there's rocks not far
out from this very town where the Sirens live; and if the King's son
hadn't had a holy bishop on board, who slept every night with a piece of
the true cross under his pillow, the green ladies would have sung him
straight into perdition. They are very fair-spoken at first, and sing so
that a man gets perfectly drunk with their music, and longs to fly to
them; but they suck him down at last under water, and strangle him, and
that's the end of him."

"You never told me about this before, Jocunda."

"Haven't I, child? Well, I will now. You see, this good bishop, he
dreamed three times that they would sail past those rocks, and he was
told to give all the sailors holy wax from an altar-candle to stop their
ears, so that they shouldn't hear the music. Well, the King's son said
he wanted to hear the music, so he wouldn't have his ears stopped; but
he told 'em to tie him to the mast, so that he could hear it, but not to
mind a word he said, if he begged 'em ever so hard to untie him.

"Well, you see they did it; and the old bishop, he had his ears sealed
up tight, and so did all the men; but the young man stood tied to the
mast, and when they sailed past he was like a demented creature. He
called out that it was his lady who was singing, and he wanted to go to
her,--and his mother, who they all knew was a blessed saint in paradise
years before; and he commanded them to untie him, and pulled and
strained on his cords to get free; but they only tied him the tighter,
and so they got him past,--for, thanks to the holy wax, the sailors
never heard a word, and so they kept their senses. So they all got safe
home; but the young prince was so sick and pining that he had to be
exorcised and prayed for seven times seven days before they could get
the music out of his head."

"Why," said Agnes, "do those Sirens sing there yet?"

"Well, that was a hundred years ago. They say the old bishop, he prayed
'em down; for he went out a little after on purpose, and gave 'em a
precious lot of holy water; most likely he got 'em pretty well under,
though my husband's brother says he's heard 'em singing in a small way,
like frogs in spring-time; but he gave 'em a pretty wide berth. You see,
these spirits are what's left of old heathen times, when, Lord bless us!
the earth was just as full of 'em as a bit of old cheese is of mites.
Now a Christian body, if they take reasonable care, can walk quit of
'em; and if they have any haunts in lonesome and doleful places, if one
puts up a cross or a shrine, they know they have to go."

"I am thinking," said Agnes, "it would be a blessed work to put up some
shrines to Saint Agnes and our good Lord in the gorge, and I'll promise
to keep the lamps burning and the flowers in order."

"Bless the child!" said Jocunda, "that is a pious and Christian
thought."

"I have an uncle in Florence who is a father in the holy convent of San
Marco, who paints and works in stone,--not for money, but for the glory
of God; and when he comes this way I will speak to him about it," said
Agnes. "About this time in the spring he always visits us."

"That's mighty well thought of," said Jocunda. "And now, tell me, little
lamb, have you any idea who this grand cavalier may be that gave you the
ring?"

"No," said Agnes, pausing a moment over the garland of flowers she was
weaving,--"only Giulietta told me that he was brother to the King.
Giulietta said everybody knew him."

"I'm not so sure of that," said Jocunda. "Giulietta always thinks she
knows more than she does."

"Whatever he may be, his worldly state is nothing to me," said Agnes. "I
know him only in my prayers."

"Ay, ay," muttered the old woman to herself, looking obliquely out of
the corner of her eye at the girl, who was busily sorting her flowers;
"perhaps he will be seeking some other acquaintance."

"You haven't seen him since?" said Jocunda.

"Seen him? Why, dear Jocunda, it was only last evening"--

"True enough. Well, child, don't think too much of him. Men are dreadful
creatures,--in these times especially; they snap up a pretty girl as a
fox does a chicken, and no questions asked."

"I don't think he looked wicked, Jocunda; he had a proud, sorrowful
look. I don't know what could make a rich, handsome young man sorrowful;
but I feel in my heart that he is not happy. Mother Theresa says that
those who can do nothing but pray may convert princes without knowing
it."

"May be it is so," said Jocunda, in the same tone in which thrifty
professors of religion often assent to the same sort of truths in our
days. "I've seen a good deal of that sort of cattle in my day; and one
would think, by their actions, that praying souls must be scarce where
they came from."

Agnes abstractedly stooped and began plucking handfuls of lycopodium,
which was growing green and feathery on one side of the marble frieze on
which she was sitting; in so doing, a fragment of white marble, which
had been overgrown in the luxuriant green, appeared to view. It was
that frequent object in the Italian soil,--a portion of an old Roman
tombstone. Agnes bent over, intent on the mystic "_Dis Manibus_" in old
Roman letters.

"Lord bless the child! I've seen thousands of them," said Jocunda; "it's
some old heathen's grave, that's been in hell these hundred years."

"In hell?" said Agnes, with a distressful accent.

"Of course," said Jocunda. "Where should they be? Serves 'em right, too;
they were a vile old set."

"Oh, Jocunda, it's dreadful to think of, that they should have been in
hell all this time."

"And no nearer the end than when they began," said Jocunda.

Agnes gave a shivering sigh, and, looking up into the golden sky that
was pouring such floods of splendor through the orange-trees and
jasmines, thought, How could it be that the world could possibly be
going on so sweet and fair over such an abyss?

"Oh, Jocunda!" she said, "it does seem _too_ dreadful to believe! How
could they help being heathen,--being born so,--and never hearing of the
true Church?"

"Sure enough," said Jocunda, spinning away energetically, "but that's no
business of mine; my business is to save _my_ soul, and that's what I
came here for. The dear saints know I found it dull enough at first, for
I'd been used to jaunting round with my old man and the boys; but what
with marketing and preserving, and one thing and another, I get on
better now, praise to Saint Agnes!"

The large, dark eyes of Agnes were fixed abstractedly on the old woman
as she spoke, slowly dilating, with a sad, mysterious expression, which
sometimes came over them.

"Ah! how can the saints themselves be happy?" she said. "One might be
willing to wear sackcloth and sleep on the ground, one might suffer ever
so many years and years, if only one might save some of them."

"Well, it does seem hard," said Jocunda; "but what's the use of thinking
of it? Old Father Anselmo told us in one of his sermons that the Lord
wills that his saints should come to rejoice in the punishment of all
heathens and heretics; and he told us about a great saint once, who took
it into his head to be distressed because one of the old heathen whose
books he was fond of reading had gone to hell,--and he fasted and
prayed, and wouldn't take no for an answer, till he got him out."

"He did, then?" said Agnes, clasping her hands in an ecstasy.

"Yes; but the good Lord told him never to try it again,--and He struck
him dumb, as a kind of hint, you know. Why, Father Anselmo said that
even getting souls out of purgatory was no easy matter. He told us of
one holy nun who spent nine years fasting and praying for the soul of
her prince, who was killed in a duel, and then she saw in a vision
that he was only raised the least little bit out of the fire,--and she
offered up her life as a sacrifice to the Lord to deliver him, but,
after all, when she died he wasn't quite delivered. Such things made me
think that a poor old sinner like me would never get out at all, if I
didn't set about it in earnest,--though it a'n't all nuns that save
their souls either. I remember in Pisa I saw a great picture of the
Judgment-Day in the Campo Santo, and there were lots of abbesses, and
nuns, and monks, and bishops too, that the devils were clearing off into
the fire."

"Oh, Jocunda, how dreadful that fire must be!"

"Yes," said Jocunda. "Father Anselmo said hell-fire wasn't like any kind
of fire we have here,--made to warm us and cook our food,--but a kind
made especially to torment body and soul, and not made for anything
else. I remember a story he told us about that. You see, there was an
old duchess that lived in a grand old castle,--and a proud, wicked old
thing enough; and her son brought home a handsome young bride to the
castle, and the old duchess was jealous of her,--'cause, you see, she
hated to give up her place in the house, and the old family-jewels, and
all the splendid things,--and so one time, when the poor young thing was
all dressed up in a set of the old family-lace, what does the old hag do
but set fire to it!"

"How horrible!" said Agnes.

"Yes; and when the young thing ran screaming in her agony, the old hag
stopped her and tore off a pearl rosary that she was wearing, for fear
it should be spoiled by the fire."

"Holy Mother! can such things be possible?" said Agnes.

"Well, you see, she got her pay for it. That rosary was of famous old
pearls that had been in the family a hundred years; but from that moment
the good Lord struck it with a curse, and filled it white-hot with
hell-fire, so that, if anybody held it a few minutes in their hand, it
would burn to the bone. The old sinner made believe that she was in
great affliction for the death of her daughter-in-law, and that it was
all an accident, and the poor young man went raving mad,--but that awful
rosary the old hag couldn't get rid of. She couldn't give it away,--she
couldn't sell it,--but back it would come every night, and lie right
over her heart, all white-hot with the fire that burned in it. She gave
it to a convent, and she sold it to a merchant, but back it came; and
she locked it up in the heaviest chests, and she buried it down in the
lowest vaults, but it always came back in the night, till she was worn
to a skeleton; and at last the old thing died without confession or
sacrament, and went where she belonged. She was found lying dead in her
bed one morning, and the rosary was gone; but when they came to lay her
out, they found the marks of it burned to the bone into her breast.
Father Anselmo used to tell us this, to show us a little what hell-fire
was like."

"Oh, please, Jocunda, don't let us talk about it any more," said Agnes.

Old Jocunda, with her tough, vigorous organization and unceremonious
habits of expression, could not conceive the exquisite pain with which
this whole conversation had vibrated on the sensitive being at her right
hand,--that what merely awoke her hard-corded nerves to a dull vibration
of not unpleasant excitement was shivering and tearing the tenderer
chords of poor little Psyche beside her.

Ages before, beneath those very skies that smiled so sweetly over
her,--amid the bloom of lemon and citron, and the perfume of jasmine and
rose, the gentlest of old Italian souls had dreamed and wondered what
might be the unknown future of the dead, and, learning his lesson from
the glorious skies and gorgeous shores which witnessed how magnificent a
Being had given existence to man, had recorded his hopes of man's future
in the words--_Aut beatus, aut nihil_; but, singular to tell, the
religion which brought with it all human tenderness and pities,--the
hospital for the sick, the refuge for the orphan, the enfranchisement
of the slave,--this religion brought also the news of the eternal,
hopeless, living torture of the great majority of mankind, past and
present. Tender spirits, like those of Dante, carried this awful mystery
as a secret and unexplained anguish; saints wrestled with God and
wept over it; but still the awful fact remained, spite of Church and
sacrament, that the gospel was in effect, to the majority of the human
race, not the glad tidings of salvation, but the sentence of immitigable
doom.

The present traveller in Italy sees with disgust the dim and faded
frescoes in which this doom is portrayed in all its varied refinements
of torture; and the vivid Italian mind ran riot in these lurid fields,
and every monk who wanted to move his audience was in his small way a
Dante. The poet and the artist give only the highest form of the ideas
of their day, and he who cannot read the "Inferno" with firm nerves may
ask what the same representations were likely to have been in the grasp
of coarse and common minds.

The first teachers of Christianity in Italy read the Gospels by the
light of those fiendish fires which consumed their fellows. Daily made
familiar with the scorching, the searing, the racking, the devilish
ingenuities of torture, they transferred them to the future hell of the
torturers. The sentiment within us which asserts eternal justice and
retribution was stimulated to a kind of madness by that first baptism of
fire and blood, and expanded the simple and grave warnings of the gospel
into a lurid poetry of physical torture. Hence, while Christianity
brought multiplied forms of mercy into the world, it failed for many
centuries to humanize the savage forms of justice; and rack and wheel,
fire and fagot were the modes by which human justice aspired to a
faint imitation of what divine justice was supposed to extend through
eternity.

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