Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 by Various

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"Delightful, grandmamma," said Agnes, blushing deeply with
consciousness.

"Well," said Elsie, with satisfaction, "one thing I know,--I've
frightened off that old hawk of a cavalier with his hooked nose. I
haven't seen so much as the tip of his shoe-tie to-day. Yesterday he
made himself very busy around our stall; but I made him understand that
you never would come there again till the coast was clear."

The monk was busily retouching the sketch of the Virgin of the
Annunciation. He looked up, and saw Agnes standing gazing towards the
setting sun, the pale olive of her cheek deepening into a crimson
flush. His head was too full of his own work to give much heed to the
conversation that had passed, but, looking at the glowing face, he said
to himself,--

"Truly, sometimes she might pass for the rose of Sharon as well as the
lily of the valley!"

The moon that evening rose an hour later than the night before, yet
found Agnes still on her knees before the sacred shrine, while Elsie,
tired, grumbled at the draft on her sleeping-time.

"Enough is as good as a feast," she remarked between her teeth; still
she had, after all, too much secret reverence for her grandchild's piety
openly to interrupt her. But in those days, as now, there were the
material and the spiritual, the souls who looked only on things that
could be seen, touched, and tasted, and souls who looked on the things
that were invisible.

Agnes was pouring out her soul in that kind of yearning, passionate
prayer possible to intensely sympathetic people, in which the
interests and wants of another seem to annihilate for a time personal
consciousness, and make the whole of one's being seem to dissolve in an
intense solicitude for something beyond one's self. In such hours prayer
ceases to be an act of the will, and resembles more some overpowering
influence which floods the soul from without, bearing all its faculties
away on its resistless tide.

Brought up from infancy to feel herself in a constant circle of
invisible spiritual agencies, Agnes received this wave of intense
feeling as an impulse inspired and breathed into her by some celestial
spirit, that thus she should be made an interceding medium for a soul in
some unknown strait or peril. For her faith taught her to believe in an
infinite struggle of intercession in which all the Church Visible and
Invisible were together engaged, and which bound them in living bonds of
sympathy to an interceding Redeemer, so that there was no want or woe
of human life that had not somewhere its sympathetic heart, and its
never-ceasing prayer before the throne of Eternal Love. Whatever may be
thought of the actual truth of this belief, it certainly was far more
consoling than that intense individualism of modern philosophy which
places every soul alone in its life-battle,--scarce even giving it a God
to lean upon.

CHAPTER XI.

THE CONFESSIONAL.

The reader, if a person of any common knowledge of human nature,
will easily see the direction in which a young, inexperienced, and
impressible girl would naturally be tending under all the influences
which we perceive to have come upon her.

But in the religious faith which Agnes professed there was a modifying
force, whose power both for good and evil can scarcely be estimated.

The simple Apostolic direction, "Confess your faults one to another,"
and the very natural need of personal pastoral guidance and assistance
to a soul in its heavenward journey, had in common with many other
religious ideas been forced by the volcanic fervor of the Italian nature
into a certain exaggerated proposition. Instead of brotherly confession
one to another, or the pastoral sympathy of a fatherly elder, the
religious mind of the day was instructed in an awful mysterious
sacrament of confession, which gave to some human being a divine right
to unlock the most secret chambers of the soul, to scrutinize and direct
its most veiled and intimate thoughts, and, standing in God's stead, to
direct the current of its most sensitive and most mysterious emotions.

Every young aspirant for perfection in the religious life had to
commence by an unreserved surrender of the whole being in blind faith at
the feet of some such spiritual director, all whose questions must
be answered, and all whose injunctions obeyed, as from God himself.
Thenceforward was to be no soul-privacy, no retirement, nothing too
sacred to be expressed, too delicate to be handled and analyzed. In
reading the lives of those ethereally made and moulded women who
have come down to our day canonized as saints in the Roman Catholic
communion, one too frequently gets the impression of most regal natures,
gifted with all the most divine elements of humanity, but subjected to
a constant unnatural pressure from the ceaseless scrutiny and ungenial
pertinacity of some inferior and uncomprehending person invested with
the authority of a Spiritual Director.

That there are advantages attending this species of intimate direction,
when wisely and skilfully managed, cannot be doubted. Grovelling and
imperfect natures have often thus been lifted up and carried in the arms
of superior wisdom and purity. The confession administered by a Fenelon
or a Francis de Sales was doubtless a beautiful and most invigorating
ordinance; but the difficulty in its actual working is the rarity of
such superior natures,--the fact, that the most ignorant and most
incapable may be invested with precisely the same authority as the most
intelligent and skilful.

He to whom the faith of Agnes obliged her to lay open her whole soul,
who had a right with probing-knife and lancet to dissect out all the
finest nerves and fibres of her womanly nature, was a man who had been
through all the wild and desolating experiences incident to a dissipated
and irregular life in those turbulent days.

It is true, that he was now with most stringent and earnest solemnity
striving to bring every thought and passion into captivity to the spirit
of his sacred vows; but still, when a man has once lost that unconscious
soul-purity which exists in a mind unscathed by the fires of passion, no
after-tears can weep it back again. No penance, no prayer, no anguish
of remorse can give back the simplicity of a soul that has never been
stained.

If Padre Francesco had not failed to make those inquiries into the
character of Agnes's mysterious lover which he assumed to be necessary
as a matter of pastoral faithfulness.

It was not difficult for one possessing the secrets of the confessional
to learn the real character of any person in the neighborhood, and it
was with a kind of bitter satisfaction which rather surprised himself
that the father learned enough ill of the cavalier to justify his using
every possible measure to prevent his forming any acquaintance with
Agnes. He was captain of a band of brigands, and, of course, in array
against the State; he was excommunicated, and, of course, an enemy of
the Church. What but the vilest designs could be attributed to such a
man? Was he not a wolf prowling round the green, secluded pastures where
as yet the Lord's lamb had been folded in unconscious innocence?

Father Francesco, when he next met Agnes at the confessional, put such
questions as drew from her the whole account of all that had passed
between her and the stranger. The recital on Agnes's part was perfectly
translucent and pure, for she had said no word and had had no thought
that brought the slightest stain upon her soul. Love and prayer had been
the prevailing habit of her life, and in promising to love and pray she
had had no worldly or earthly thought. The language of gallantry, or
even of sincere passion, had never reached her ear; but it had always
been as natural to her to love every human being as for a plant
with tendrils to throw them round the next plant, and therefore she
entertained the gentle guest who had lately found room in her heart
without a question or a scruple.

As Agnes related her childlike story of unconscious faith and love, her
listener felt himself strangely and bitterly agitated. It was a vision
of ignorant purity and unconsciousness rising before him, airy and
glowing as a child's soap-bubble, which one touch might annihilate; but
he felt a strange remorseful tenderness, a yearning admiration, at its
unsubstantial purity. There is something pleading and pitiful in the
simplicity of perfect ignorance,--a rare and delicate beauty in its
freshness, like the morning-glory cup, which, once withered by the heat,
no second morning can restore. Agnes had imparted to her confessor, by
a mysterious sympathy, something like the morning freshness of her own
soul; she had redeemed the idea of womanhood from gross associations,
and set before him a fair ideal of all that female tenderness and purity
may teach to man. Her prayers--well he believed in them,--but be set
his teeth with a strange spasm of inward passion,--when he thought
of her prayers and love being given to another. He tried to persuade
himself that this was only the fervor of pastoral zeal against a vile
robber who had seized the fairest lamb of the sheepfold; but there was
an intensely bitter, miserable feeling connected with it, that scorched
and burned his higher aspirations like a stream of lava running among
fresh leaves and flowers.

The conflict of his soul communicated a severity of earnestness to
his voice and manner which made Agnes tremble, as he put one probing
question after another, designed to awaken some consciousness of sin
in her soul. Still, though troubled and distressed by his apparent
disapprobation, her answers came always clear, honest, unfaltering, like
those of one who _could_ not form an idea of evil.

When the confession was over, he came out of his recess to speak
with Agnes a few words face to face. His eyes had a wild and haggard
earnestness, and a vivid hectic flush on either cheek told how extreme
was his emotion. Agnes lifted her eyes to his with an innocent wondering
trouble and an appealing confidence that for a moment wholly unnerved
him. He felt a wild impulse to clasp her in his arms; and for a moment
it seemed to him he would sacrifice heaven and brave hell, if he could
for one moment hold her to his heart, and say that he loved her,--her,
the purest, fairest, sweetest revelation of God's love that had ever
shone on his soul,--her, the only star, the only flower, the only
dew-drop of a burning, barren, weary life. It seemed to him that it was
not the longing, gross passion, but the outcry of his whole nature for
something noble, sweet, and divine.

But he turned suddenly away with a sort of groan, and, folding his robe
over his face, seemed engaged in earnest prayer. Agnes looked at him
awe-struck and breathless.

"Oh, my father!" she faltered, "what have I done?"

"Nothing, my poor child," said the father, suddenly turning toward her
with recovered calmness and dignity; "but I behold in thee a fair lamb
whom the roaring lion is seeking to devour. Know, my daughter, that I
have made inquiries concerning this man of whom you speak, and find that
he is an outlaw and a robber and a heretic,--a vile wretch stained
by crimes that have justly drawn down upon him the sentence of
excommunication from our Holy Father the Pope."

Agnes grew deadly pale at this announcement.

"Can it be possible?" she gasped. "Alas! what dreadful temptations have
driven him to such sins?"

"Daughter, beware how you think too lightly of them, or suffer his good
looks and flattering words to blind you to their horror. You must from
your heart detest him as a vile enemy."

"Must I, my father?"

"Indeed you must."

"But if the dear Lord loved us and died for us when we were his enemies,
may we not pity and pray for unbelievers? Oh, say, my dear father, is it
not allowed to us to pray for all sinners, even the vilest?"

"I do not say that you may not, my daughter," said the monk, too
conscientious to resist the force of this direct appeal; "but,
daughter," he added, with an energy that alarmed Agnes, "you must watch
your heart; you must not suffer your interest to become a worldly love:
remember that you are chosen to be the espoused of Christ alone."

While the monk was speaking thus, Agnes fixed on him her eyes with an
innocent mixture of surprise and perplexity,--which gradually deepened
into a strong gravity of gaze, as if she were looking through him,
through all visible things into some far-off depth of mysterious
knowledge.

"My Lord will keep me," she said; "my soul is safe in His heart as a
little bird in its nest; but while I love Him, I cannot help loving
everybody whom He loves, even His enemies: and, father, my heart prays
within me for this poor sinner, whether I will or no; something within
me continually intercedes for him."

"Oh, Agnes! Agnes! blessed child, pray for me also," said the monk, with
a sudden burst of emotion which perfectly confounded his disciple. He
hid his face with his hands.

"My blessed father!" said Agnes, "how could I deem that holiness like
yours had any need of my prayers?"

"Child! child! you know nothing of me. I am a miserable sinner, tempted
of devils, in danger of damnation."

Agnes stood appalled at this sudden burst, so different from the rigid
and restrained severity of tone in which the greater part of the
conversation had been conducted. She stood silent and troubled; while
he, whom she had always regarded with such awful veneration, seemed
shaken by some internal whirlwind of emotion whose nature she could not
comprehend.

At length Father Francesco raised his head, and recovered his wonted
calm severity of expression.

"My daughter," he said, "little do the innocent lambs of the flock know
of the dangers and conflicts through which the shepherds must pass who
keep the Lord's fold. We have the labors of angels laid upon us, and we
are but men. Often we stumble, often we faint, and Satan takes advantage
of our weakness. I cannot confer with you now as I would; but, my child,
listen to my directions. Shun this young man; let nothing ever lead
you to listen to another word from him; you must not even look at him,
should you meet, but turn away your head and repeat a prayer. I do not
forbid you to practise the holy work of intercession for his soul, but
it must be on these conditions.

"My father," said Agnes, "you may rely on my obedience"; and, kneeling,
she kissed his hand.

He drew it suddenly away, with a gesture of pain and displeasure.

"Pardon a sinful child this liberty," said Agnes.

"You know not what you do," said the father, hastily. "Go, my
daughter,--go, at once; I will confer with you some other time"; and
hastily raising his hand in an attitude of benediction, he turned and
went into the confessional.

"Wretch! hypocrite! whited sepulchre!" he said to himself,--"to warn
this innocent child against a sin that is all the while burning in my
own bosom! Yes, I do love her,--I do! I, that warn her against earthly
love, I would plunge into hell itself to win hers! And yet, when I know
that the care of her soul is only a temptation and a snare to me, I
cannot, will not give her up! No, I cannot!--no, I will not! Why should
I _not_ love her? Is she not pure as Mary herself? Ah, blessed is he
whom such a woman leads! And I--I--have condemned myself to the society
of swinish, ignorant, stupid monks,--I must know no such divine souls,
no such sweet communion! Help me, blessed Mary!--help a miserable
sinner!"

Agnes left the confessional perplexed and sorrowful. The pale, proud,
serious face of the cavalier seemed to look at her imploringly, and she
thought of him now with the pathetic interest we give to something noble
and great exposed to some fatal danger. "Could the sacrifice of my whole
life," she thought, "rescue this noble soul from perdition, then I shall
not have lived in vain. I am a poor little girl; nobody knows whether
I live or die. He is a strong and powerful man, and many must stand or
fall with him. Blessed be the Lord that gives to his lowly ones a
power to work in secret places! How blessed should I be to meet him in
Paradise, all splendid as I saw him in my dream! Oh, that would be worth
living for,--worth dying for!"

* * * * *

THE AQUARIUM.

The sumptuous abode of Licinius Crassus echoes with his sighs and
groans. His children and slaves respect his profound sorrow, and leave
him with intelligent affection to solitude,--that friend of great grief,
so grateful to the afflicted soul, because tears can flow unwitnessed.
Alas! the favorite sea-eel of Crassus is dead, and it is uncertain
whether Crassus can survive it!

This sensitive Roman caused his beloved fish to be buried with great
magnificence: he raised a monument to its memory, and never ceased to
mourn for it. So say Macrobius and Aelian.

This man, we are told, who displayed so little tenderness towards his
servants, had an extraordinary weakness concerning his fine sea-eels. He
passed his life beside the superb fish-pond, where he lovingly
fattened them from his own hand. Nor was his fondness for pisciculture
exceptional in his times. The fish-pond, to raise and breed the
finest varieties of fish, was as necessary an adjunct to a complete
establishment as a barn-yard or hen-coop to a modern farmer or rural
gentleman. Wherever there was a well-appointed Roman villa, it contained
a _piscina_; while many gardens near the sea could boast also a
_vivarium_, which, in this connection, means an oyster-bed.

Fish-ponds, of course, varied with the wealth, the ingenuity, and the
taste of their owners. Many were of vast size and of heterogeneous
contents. The costly _Muraena_, the carp, the turbot, and many other
varieties, sported at will in the great inclosures prepared for them.
The greater part of the Roman emperors were very fond of sea-eels.
The greedy Vitellius, growing tired of this dish, would at last, as
Suetonius assures us, eat only the soft roe; and numerous vessels
ploughed the seas in order to obtain it for him. The family of Licinius
took their surname of Muraena from these fish, in order thus to
perpetuate their silly affection for them. The love of fish became a
real mania, and the _Murcena Helena_ was worshipped.

Hortensius, who possessed three splendid country-seats, constructed in
the grounds of his villa at Bauli a fish-tank so massive that it has
endured to the present day, and so vast as to gain for it even then the
name of _Piscina Mircihilis_. It is a subterraneous edifice, vaulted,
and divided by four rows of arcades and numerous columns,--some ten
feet deep, and of very great extent. Here the largest fishes could be
fattened at will; and even the mighty sturgeon, prince of good-cheer,
might find ample accommodations.

Lucullus, that most ostentatious of patricians, and autocrat of
_bons-vivants_, had a mountain cut through in the neighborhood of
Naples, so as to open a canal, and bring up the sea and its fishes to
the centre of the gardens of his sumptuous villa. So Cicero well names
him one of the Tritons of fish-pools. His country-seat of Pausilypum
resembled a village rather than a villa, and, if of less extent, was
more magnificent in luxury than the gigantic villa of Hadrian, near
Tivoli. Great masses of stone-work are still visible, glimmering under
the blue water, where the marble walls repelled the waves, and ran out
in long arcades and corridors far into the sea. Inlets and creeks,
which wear even now an artificial air, mark the site of _piscinae_ and
refreshing lakes. Here were courts, baths, porticoes, and terraces, in
the _villa urbana_, or residence of the lord,--the _villa rustica_ for
the steward and slaves,--the _gallinarium_ for hens,--the _apiarium_ for
bees,--the _suile_ for swine,--the _villa fructuaria_, including the
buildings for storing corn, wine, oil, and fruits,--the _horius_, or
garden,--and the park, containing the fish-pond and the _vivarium_.
Statues, groves, and fountains, pleasure-boats, baths, jesters, and even
a small theatre, served to vary the amusements of the lovely grounds and
of the tempting sea.

But it was not to be supposed that men satiated with the brutal shows
of the amphitheatre, even if enervated by their frequentation of the
Suburra, could, on leaving the city, be always content with simple
pleasures, rural occupations, or pleasure-sails. Habit demanded
something more exciting; and the ready tragedy of a fish-pond filled
with ravenous eels fed upon human flesh furnished the needed excitement.
For men _blase_ with the spectacles of lions and tigers lacerating the
_bestiarii_. It was much more exciting to witness a swarm of sea-eels
tearing to pieces an awkward or rebellious slave. Vedius Pollio, a Roman
knight of the highest distinction, could find nothing better to do for
his dear Muraenae than to throw them slaves alive; and he never
failed to have sea-eels served to him after their odious repast, says
Tertullian. It is true, these wretched creatures generally deserved this
terrible punishment; for instance, Seneca speaks of one who had the
awkwardness to break a crystal vase while waiting at supper on the
irascible Pollio.

Pisciculture was carried so far that fish-ponds were constructed on
the roofs of houses. More practical persons conducted a stream of
river-water through their dining-rooms, so that the fish swam under the
table, and it "was only necessary to stoop and pick them out the moment
before eating them; and as they were often cooked on the table, their
perfect freshness was thus insured. Martial (Lib. X., Epigram. XXX., vv.
16-25) alludes to this custom, as well as to the culture and taming of
fish in the _piscina_.

"Nec seta largo quaerit in mari praedam,
Sed e cubiclo lectuloque jactatam
Spectatus alte lineam trahit piscis.
Si quando Nereus sentit Aeoli regnum,
Ridet procellas tula de suo mensa.
Piscina rhombum pascit et lupos vernas,
Nomenculator mugilem citat notum
Et adesse jussi prodeunt senes mulli."

It having been remarked that the red mullet passed through many changes
of color in dying, like the dolphin, fashion decreed that it should die
upon the table. Served alive, inclosed in a glass vessel, it was cooked
in the presence of the attentive guests, by a slow fire, in order
that they might gloat upon its sufferings and expiring hues, before
satisfying their appetites with its flesh.

It will not surprise us to learn that the eminent _gourmand_ Apicius
offered a prize to the inventor of a new sauce made of mullets' livers.

But we may remark, that fish, like all other natural objects, were
studied by the ancients only to pet or to eat. All their views of
Nature were essentially selfish; none were disinterested, reverential,
deductive, or scientific. Nature ministered only to their appetites,
in her various kinds of food,--to their service, in her beasts of
burden,--or to their childish or ferocious amusement, with talking
birds, as the starling, with pet fish, or with pugnacious wild beasts.
There was no higher thought. The Greeks, though fond of flowers, and
employing them for a multitude of adornments and festive occasions
entirely unequalled now, yet did not advance to their botanical study or
classification. The Roman, if enamored of the fine arts, could see no
Art in Nature. There was no experiment, no discovery, and but little
observation. The whole science of Natural History, which has assumed
such magnitude and influence in our times, was then almost entirely
neglected.

And yet what an opportunity there was for the naturalist, had a single
enthusiast arisen? All lands, all climes, and all their natural
productions were subservient to the will of the Emperor. The orb of the
earth was searched for the roe of eels or the fins of mullets to gratify
Caesar. And the whole world might have been explored, and specimens
deposited in one gigantic museum in the Eternal City, at the nod of a
single individual. But the observer, the lover of Nature, was wanting;
and the whole world was ransacked merely to consign its living tenants
to the _vivaria_, and thence to the fatal arena of the amphitheatre. Yet
even here the naturalist might have pursued his studies on individuals,
and even whole species, both living and dead, without quitting Rome. The
animal kingdom lay tributary at his feet, but served only to satiate his
appetite or his passions, and not to enrich his mind.

So, again, Rome's armies traversed the globe, and her legions were often
explorers of hitherto unknown regions. But no men of science, no corps
of _savans_ was attached to her cohorts, to march in the footsteps
of conquest and gather the fruits of victory to enrich the schools.
Provinces were devastated, great cities plundered, nations made captive,
and all the masterpieces of Art borne off to adorn Rome. But Nature was
never rifled of her secrets; nor was discovery carried beyond the most
material things. The military spirit stifled natural science.

There were then, to be sure, no tendencies of thought to anything but
war, pleasure, literature, or art. There was comparatively no knowledge
of the physical sciences, whose culture Mr. Buckle has shown to have
exerted so powerful an influence on civilization. The convex lens--as
since developed into the microscope, the giver of a new world to
man--was known to Archimedes only as an instrument to burn the enemy's
fleet.

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