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+Project Gutenberg's Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius, by A. J. O'Reilly
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius
+
+Author: A. J. O'Reilly
+
+Posting Date: January 30, 2009 [EBook #2139]
+Release Date: April, 2000
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALVIRA: THE HEROINE OF VESUVIUS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brett Fishburne.  HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Alvira:  The Heroine of Vesuvius
+
+
+by
+
+Rev. A. J. O'Reilly, D.D.
+
+
+
+
+Introduction
+
+
+
+The Penitent Saints
+
+
+The interesting and instructive character of this sensational narrative,
+which we cull from the traditions of a past generation, must cover
+the shortcomings of the pen that has labored to present it in an
+English dress.
+
+We are aware that the propriety of drawing from the oblivion of
+forgotten literature such a story will be questioned.  The decay of
+the chivalrous spirit of the middle ages, and the prudish, puritanical
+code of morality that has superseded the simple manners of our
+forefathers, render it hazardous to cast into the hands of the present
+generation the thrilling records of sin and repentance such as they
+were seen and recorded in days gone by.  Yet in the midst of a
+literature professedly false, and which paints in fascinating colors
+the various phases of unrepented vice and crime, without the redeeming
+shadows of honor and Christian morality, our little volume must fall
+a welcome sunbeam.  The strange career of our heroine constitutes a
+sensational biography charming and beautiful in the moral it presents.
+
+The evils of mixed marriages, of secret societies, of intemperance,
+and the indulgence of self-love in ardent and enthusiastic youth, find
+here the record of their fatal influence on social life, reflected
+through the medium of historical facts.  Therefore we present to the
+young a chapter of warning--a tale of the past with a deep moral for
+the present.
+
+The circumstances of our tale are extraordinary.  A young girl dresses
+in male attire, murders her father, becomes an officer in the army,
+goes through the horrors of battle, and dies a SAINT.
+
+Truly we have here matter sensational enough for the most exacting
+novelist; but we disclaim all effort to play upon the passions, or
+add another work of fiction to the mass of irreligious trash so powerful
+in the employ of the evil one for the seduction of youth.  In the
+varied scenes of life there are many actions influenced by secret
+motives known only to the heart that harbors them.  Not all are
+dishonorable.  It takes a great deal of guilt to make a person as black
+as he is painted by his enemies.  Many a brave heart has, under the
+garb of an impropriety, accomplished heroic acts of self-denial.
+
+History is teeming with instances where the love of creatures, and even
+the holier and more sublime love of the Creator, have, in moments of
+enthusiasm, induced tender females to forget the weakness of their
+sex and successfully fulfil the spheres of manhood.  These scenes, so
+censurable, are extraordinary more from the rarity of their occurrence
+than from the motives that inspire them, and thus our tale draws much
+of its thrilling interest from the unique character of its details.
+
+"But what a saint!" we fancy we hear whispered by the fastidious and
+scrupulous into whose hand our little work may fall.
+
+Inadvertently the thought will find a similar expression from the
+superficial reader; but if we consider a little, our heroine presents
+a career not more extraordinary than those that excite our surprise
+in the lives of the penitent saints venerated on the alters of the
+Church.  Sanctity is not to be judged by antecedents.  The soul
+crimsoned with guilt may, in the crucible of repentance, become white
+like the crystal snow before it touches the earth.  This consoling
+thought is not a mere assertion, but a matter of faith confirmed by
+fact.  There are as great names among the penitent saints of the
+Church as amongst the few brilliant stars whose baptismal innocence
+was never dimmed by any cloud.
+
+Advance the rule that the early excesses of the penitent stains must
+debar them from the esteem their heroic repentance has won; then we
+must tear to pieces the consoling volumes of hagiology, we must drag
+down Paul, Peter, Augustine, Jerome, Magdalen, and a host of illustrious
+penitents from their thrones amongst the galaxy of the elect, and cast
+the thrilling records of their repentance into the oblivion their early
+career would seem to merit.  If we are to have no saints but those of
+whom it is testified they never did a wrong act, then the catalogue
+of sanctity will be reduced to baptized infants who died before coming
+to the use of reason, and a few favored adults who could be counted
+on the fingers.
+
+Is it not rather the spirit and practice of the Church to propose to
+her erring children the heroic example of souls who passed through the
+storms and trials of life, who had the same weaknesses to contend with,
+the same enemies to combat, as they have, whose triumph is her glory
+and her crown?  The Catholic Church, which has so successfully promoted
+the civilization of society and the moral regeneration of nations,
+achieved her triumph by the conversion of those she first drew from
+darkness.  Placed as lights on the rocks of eternity, and shining on
+us who are yet tossed about on the stormy seas of time, the penitent
+saints serve us as saving beacons to guide our course during the
+tempest.  Many a feeble soul would have suffered shipwreck had it not
+taken refuge near those tutelary towers where are suspended the memorial
+deeds of the sainted heroes whose armor was sackcloth, whose watchword
+the sigh of repentance poured out in the lonely midnight.
+
+While Augustine was struggling with the attractions of the world which
+had seduced his warm African heart, whose gilded chains seemed once
+so light, he animated himself to Christian courage by the examples of
+virtue which he had seen crowned in the Church triumphant.
+
+"Canst thou not do," he said to himself, "what these have done?  Timid
+youths and tender maidens have abandoned the deceitful joys of time
+for the imperishable goods of eternity; canst thou not do likewise?
+Were these lions, and art thou a timid deer?"  Thus this illustrious
+penitent, who was one of the brightest lights of Christianity, has
+made known to us the triumph he gained in his internal struggles by
+the examples of his predecessors in the brave band of penitents who
+shed a luminous ray on the pitchy darkness of his path.
+
+The life of St. Anthony, written by St. Athanasius, produced such a
+sensation in the Christian world that the desolate caverns of Thebias
+were not able to receive all who wished to imitate that holy solitary.
+Roman matrons were then seen to create for themselves a solitude in
+the heart of their luxurious capital; offices of the palace, bedizened
+in purple and gold, deserted the court, amid the rejoicings of a
+festival, for the date-tree and the brackish rivulets of Upper Egypt!
+
+Where, then, our error in drawing from the archives of the past another
+beautiful and thrilling tale of repentance which may fall with cheerful
+rays of encouragement on the soul engaged in the fierce combat with
+self?
+
+To us the simple, touching story of Alvira has brought a charm and a
+balm.  Seeking to impart to others its interest, its amusement, and
+its moral, we cast it afloat on the sea of literature, to meet,
+probably, a premature grave in this age of irreligion and presumptuous
+denial of the necessities of penance.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+Chapter I.                                        Page
+Paris One Hundred and Fifty Years Ago . . . . . .    5
+
+Chapter II.
+The Usurer  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   10
+
+Chapter III.
+A Mixed Marriage  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   13
+
+Chapter IV.
+A Youth Trained in the Way he should Walk . . . .   18
+
+Chapter V.
+Our Heroines  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   27
+
+Chapter VI.
+A Secret Revealed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   33
+
+Chapter VII.
+Tears on Earth, Joy in Heaven . . . . . . . . . .   42
+
+Chapter VIII.
+Madeleine's Happy Death . . . . . . . . . . . . .   48
+
+Chapter IX.
+One Abyss Invokes Another . . . . . . . . . . . .   52
+
+Chapter X.
+On the Trail  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   57
+
+Chapter XI.
+The Flight  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   62
+
+Chapter XII.
+Geneva  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   71
+
+Chapter XIII.
+The Secret Societies  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   75
+
+Chapter XIV.
+The Freemason's Home  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   89
+
+Chapter XV.
+Tragedy in the Mountains  . . . . . . . . . . . .   96
+
+Chapter XVI.
+A Funeral in the Snow . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  110
+
+Chapter XVII.
+An Unwritten Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  115
+
+Chapter XVIII.
+In Uniform  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  125
+
+Chapter XIX.
+Remorse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  131
+
+Chapter XX.
+Naples  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  141
+
+Chapter XXI.
+Engagement with Brigands  . . . . . . . . . . . .  147
+
+Chapter XXII.
+The Morning After the Battle  . . . . . . . . . .  156
+
+Chapter XXIII.
+Return--A Triumph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  161
+
+Chapter XXIV.
+Alvira's Confession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  165
+
+Chapter XXV.
+Honor Saved . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  183
+
+Chapter XXVI.
+Repentance  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  190
+
+Chapter XXVII.
+The Privileges of Holy Souls  . . . . . . . . . .  199
+
+Chapter XXVIII.
+A Vision of Purgatory--A Dear One Saved . . . . .  202
+
+Chapter XXIX.
+Unexpected Meeting  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  207
+
+Chapter XXX.
+Conclusion  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  214
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+Paris One Hundred and Fifty Years Ago.
+
+
+"Paris is on fire!"  "The Tuileries burnt!"  "The Hotel de Ville in
+ashes!"  There are few who do not remember how the world was electrified
+with the telegrams that a few years ago announced the destruction of
+the French capital. It was the tragic finale of a disastrous war between
+rival nations; yet the flames were not sent on high to the neutral
+heavens to be the beacon of triumph and revenge of a conquering army,
+but set on fire by its own people, who, in a fanaticism unequalled in
+the history of nations would see their beautiful city a heap of ashes
+rather than a flourishing capital in the power of its rightful rulers.
+Fast were the devouring elements leaping through the palaces and superb
+public buildings of the city; the petroleum flames were ascending from
+basement to roof; streets were in sheets of fire; the charred beams
+were breaking; the walls fell with thundering crash--the empress city
+was indeed on fire.  Like the winds unchained by the storm-god, the
+passions of men marked their accursed sweep over the fairest city of
+Europe in torrents of human blood and the wreck of material grandeur.
+
+Those who have visited the superb queen of cities as she once flourished
+in our days could not, even in imagination, grasp the contrast between
+Paris of the present and the Paris of two hundred years ago.  With a
+power more destructive than the petroleum of the Commune, we must, in
+though, sweep away the Tuileries, the boulevards, the Opera-House and
+superb buildings that surround the Champs Elysees; on their sites we
+must build old, tottering, ill-shaped houses, six and seven stories
+high, confining narrow and dirty streets that wind in lanes and alleys
+into serpentine labyrinths, reeking with filthy odors and noxious
+vapors.  Fill those narrow streets with a lazy, ill-clad people--men
+in short skirts and clogs, squatting on the steps of antiquated cafes,
+smoking canes steeped in opium, awaiting the beck of some political
+firebrand to tear each other to pieces--and in this description you
+place before the mind's eye the city some writers have painted as
+the Paris of two hundred years ago.
+
+But the old city has passed away.  Like the fabulous creations we have
+read of in the tales of childhood, palaces, temples, boulevards, and
+theatres have sprung up on the site of the antiquated and labyrinthine
+city.  Under the dynasty of the Napoleons the capital was rebuilt with
+lavish magnificence.  Accustomed to gaze on the splendor of the sun,
+we seldom advert to its real magnificence in our universe; but pour
+its golden flood on the sightless eyeball, and all language would fail
+to tell the impression upon the paralyzed soul.  Thus, in a minor
+degree, the emigrant from the southern seas who has been for years
+amongst the cabins on the outskirts of uncultivated plains, where
+cities were built of huts, where spireless churches of thatched roof
+served for the basilicas of divine worship, and where public justice
+was administered under canvas, is startled and delighted with the
+refinement and civilization of his more favored fellow-mortal who lives
+in the French capital.
+
+Paris has been rudely disfigured in the fury of her Communist storm;
+yet, in the invincible energy of the French character, the people who
+paid to the conquering nation in fifteen months nine milliards of
+francs will restore the broken ornaments of the empress city.  From
+the smoking walls and unsightly ruins of bureaux and palaces that wring
+a tear from the patriot, France will see life restored to the emblem
+of her greatness, the phoenix-like, will rise on the horizon of time
+to claim for the future generation her position among the first-rate
+powers of Europe.
+
+To the old city we must wend our way in thought.  Crossing the venerable
+bridge at Notre Dame, we enter at once the Rue de Seine, where we
+pause before the bank and residence of Cassier.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+The Usurer.
+
+
+At a desk in the office we observe a lowsized, whiskered man.
+Intelligence beams from a lofty brow; sharp features an aquiline nose
+tell of Jewish character; his eye glistens and dulls as the heaving
+heart throbs with its tides of joy and sorrow.  Speculation, that
+glides at times into golden dreams, brightens his whole features with
+a sunbeam of joy; but suddenly it is clouded.  Some unseen intruder
+casts a baneful shadow on the ungrasped prize; the features of the
+usurer contract, the hand is clenched, the brow is wrinkled, and woe
+betide the luckless debtor whose misfortunes would lead him to the
+banker's bureau during the eclipse of his good-humor!
+
+Cassier was a banker by name, but in reality dealt in usurious loans,
+Shylock-like wringing the pound of flesh from the victims of his
+avarice.  He was known and dreaded by all the honest tradesmen of the
+city; the curse of the orphan and the widow, whom he unfeelingly drove
+into the streets, followed in his path; the children stopped their
+games and hid until he passed.  That repulsive character which haunts
+the evil-doers of society marked the aged banker as an object of dread
+and scorn to his immediate neighbors.
+
+In religion Cassier at first strongly advocated the principles of
+Lutheranism; but, as is ever the case with those set adrift on the sea
+of doubt, freed from the anchor of faith, the definite character of
+his belief was shipwrecked in a confusion of ideas.  At length he
+lapsed into the negative deism of the French infidels, just then
+commencing to gain ground in France.  He joined them, too, in open
+blasphemies against God and plotting against the stability of the
+Government.  The blood chills at reading some of the awful oaths
+administered to the partisans of those secret societies.  They proposed
+to war against God, to sweep away all salutary checks against the
+indulgence of passion, to level the alter and the throne, and advocated
+the claims of those impious theories that in modern times have found
+their fullest development in Mormonism and Communism.
+
+Further on we shall find this noxious weed, that flourishes in the
+vineyards whose hedges are broken down, producing its poisonous fruit.
+But it was at this period of our history that he became a frequent
+attendant at their reunions, returning at midnight, half intoxicated,
+to pour into the horrified ears of his wife and children the issue of
+the last blasphemous and revolutionary debate that marked the progress
+and development of their impious tendencies.
+
+No wonder Heaven sent on the Cassier family the curse that forms the
+thrill of our tragic memoir.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+A Mixed Marriage.
+
+
+The Catholic Church has placed restrictions on unions that are not
+blessed by Heaven.  Benedict XIV. has called them DETESTABLE.  A
+sad experience has proved the wisdom of the warning.  When the love
+that has existed in the blinding fervor of passion has subsided into
+the realities of every-day life, the bond of nuptial duty will be
+religion.  But the conflict of religious sentiment produces a divided
+camp.
+
+The offspring must of necessity be of negative faith.  When intelligence
+dawns on the young soul, its first reasoning powers are caught in a
+dilemma.  Reverential and filial awe chains the child to the father
+and chains it to the mother; but the father may sternly command the
+Methodist chapel for Sunday service; the mother will wish to see her
+little one worship before the alters of the Church.  Fear or love wins
+the trusting child, but neither gains a sincere believer.
+
+See that young mother, silent and fretful; the rouge that grief gives
+the moistened eye tells its own tale of secret weeping.
+
+Trusting, confiding in the power of young love, attracted by the wealth,
+the family, or the manners of her suitor, she allows the indissoluble
+tie to bind her in unholy wedlock.  Soon the faith she has trifled
+with assumes its mastery in her repentant heart, but liberty is gone;
+for the dream of conjugal bliss which dazzled when making her choice,
+she finds herself plunged for life into the most galling and
+irremediable of human sorrows--secret domestic persecution.  Few brave
+the trial; the largest number go with the current to the greater evil
+of apostasy.
+
+Cassier loved a beautiful Catholic girl named Madeleine.  Blinded by
+the stronger passion, he waived religious prejudice.  He wooed, he
+promised, he won.  The timid Madeleine, beneath her rich suitor in
+position, dazzled by wealth, and decoyed by the fair promises that
+so often deceive the confiding character of girlhood, gave her hand
+and her heart to a destiny she soon learned to lament.
+
+Fancy had built castles of future enjoyment; dress, ornament, and
+society waved their fascinating wings over her path.  Unacquainted
+with their shadowy pleasures, her preparations for her nuptials were
+a dream of joy, too soon to be blasted with the realities of suffering
+that characterize the union not blessed by Heaven.  Amid the music
+and flowers, amid the congratulations of a thousand admiring friends,
+with heart and step as light as childhood, Madeleine, like victims,
+dressed in flowers and gold, led to the alter of Jupiter in the
+Capitol of old, was conducted from the bridal alter to the sacrifice
+of her future joy.  Story oft told in the vicissitudes of betrayed
+innocence and in the fate of those who build their happiness in the
+castles of fancy:  like the brilliancy of sunset her moment of pleasure
+faded; the novelty and tinsel of her gilded home lost their charm,
+and the virtue of her childhood was wrecked on golden rocks.  She no
+longer went to daily Mass; her visits to the convent became less
+frequent, her dress lighter; her conversation, toned by the ideas of
+pride and self-love reflected from the society she moved in, was profane
+and irreligious; and soon the roses of Christian virtue that bloom in
+the cheek of innocent maidenhood became sick and withered in the heated,
+feverish air of perverse influences that tainted her gilded home.
+
+Sixteen years of sorrow and repentance had passed over Madeleine,
+and found her, at the commencement of our narrative, the victim of
+consumption and internal anguish, the more keen because the more secret.
+The outward world believed her happy; many silly maidens, in moments
+of vanity, deemed they could have gained heaven if they were possessed
+of Madeleine's wealth, her jewels, her carriages, her dresses; but were
+the veils that shroud the hypocrisy of human joy raised for the warning
+of the uninitiated, many a noble heart like Madeleine's would show the
+blight of disappointment, with the thorns thick and sharp under the
+flowers that are strewn on their path.  The sympathy of manhood, ever
+flung over the couch of suffering beauty, must hover in sighs of
+regret over the ill-fated Madeleine, whose discolored eye and attenuated
+form, whose pallid cheek, furrowed by incessant tears, told the wreck
+of a beautiful girl sinking to an early tomb.
+
+Her children--three in number--cause her deepest anxiety; they are the
+heroes of our tale, and must at once be introduced to the reader.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+A Youth Trained in the Way He Should Walk.
+
+
+                       To-morrow--
+  'Tis a period nowhere to be found
+  In all the hoary registers of time,
+  Unless, perchance, in the fool's calendar.
+  Wisdom disdains the word, nor holds society
+  With those who own it.
+  'Tis Fancy's child, and Folly is its father;
+  Wrought of such stuff as dreams are, and as baseless
+  As the fantastic visions of the evening.
+                                     --Coulton.
+
+
+Like one of those rare and beautiful flowers found on the mountain-side
+in fellowship with plants of inferior beauty, the heir of the
+Cassier family is a strange exception of heroic virtue in the midst
+of a school of seduction.  The saints were never exotics in their own
+circle.  Their early histories are filled with sad records confirming
+the prophecy of our blessed Lord:  "The world will hate you because
+it loves not me."
+
+The student of hagiology recalls with a sight the touching fate of
+a Dympna who was the martyred victim of a father's impiety; of a
+Stanislaus pursued by brothers who thirsted for his blood; of a Damian
+who nearly starved under his stepfather's cruelty; of martyrs led to
+the criminal stone for decapitation by inhuman parents.
+
+Louis Marie, the eldest of Cassier's children, was of a naturally good
+disposition.  Through the solicitations of his mother and the guidance
+of an unseen Providence that watched over his youth, he was early
+sent to the care of the Jesuits.  Under the direction of the holy and
+sainted members of this order he soon gave hope of a religious and
+virtuous manhood.  Away from the scoffs of an unbelieving father and
+the weakening seductions of pleasure, he opened his generous soul to
+those salutary impressions of virtue which draw the soul to God and
+enable it to despise the frivolities of life.
+
+The vacation, to other youths a time of pleasure, to Louis was tedious.
+Though passionately attached to his mother, yet the impious and often
+blasphemous remarks of his father chilled his heart; the levity with
+which his sisters ridiculed his piety was very disagreeable; hence,
+under the guidance of a supernatural call to grace, he longed to be
+back with the kind fathers, where the quiet joys of study and solitude
+far outweighed the short-lived excitement called pleasure by his
+worldly sisters.  This religious tendency found at last its consummation
+in an act of heroic self-denial which leads us to scenes of touching
+interest on the threshold of this extraordinary historical drama.
+
+At the time our narrative commences Louis was seriously meditating
+his flight from home and the world to bury himself in some cloister
+of religion.  His studies of philosophy and history had convinced
+him of the immortality of the soul and the vanity of all human
+greatness.  In his frequent meditations he became more and more
+attracted towards the only lasting, imperishable Good which the soul
+will one day find in its possession.  "Made for God!" he would say to
+himself, "my soul is borne with an impetuous impulse towards him; like
+the  dove sent from the ark, it floats over the vast waters, and seeks
+in vain a resting place for its wearied wing; it must return again to
+the ark."
+
+The history of the great ones of the world produced a deep impression
+on Louis' mind.  Emblazoned on the annals of the past he read the
+names of great men who played their part for a brief hour on the stage
+of life.  They grasped for a moment the gilded bubble of wealth, of
+glory, and power; but scarcely had they raised the cup of joy to their
+lips when it was dashed from them by some stroke of misfortune or
+death.  The pageant of pride, the tinsel of glory, were not more
+lasting than the fantastic castles that are built in the luminous
+clouds that hang around the sunset.
+
+At college Louis was called on with his companions to write a thesis
+on the downfall of Marius.  Nothing more congenial to his convictions
+or more encouraging to the deep resolution growing in his heart could
+be selected.  The picture he drew from the sad history of the
+conqueror of the Cimbri was long remembered among his school companions.
+
+Marius was seven times Consul of Rome; in the hapless day of his
+ascendancy he threatened to stain three-fourths of the empire with
+human blood.  Blasted in his golden dream of ambition, driven into
+exile by victorious enemies, he was cast by a storm on the shores of
+Africa, homeless and friendless; in cold and hunger he sought shelter
+amidst the ruins of Carthage.  Carthage, whose fallen towers lay in
+crumbling masses around him, was once the rival city of imperial Rome
+herself, and, under the able leadership of Hannibal, threatened to
+wrest from the queen of the Seven Hills the rule of the world.  Now
+its streets are covered with grass; the wild scream of the bird of
+solitude and the moanings of the night-owl mingle with the sobs of
+a fallen demigod who once made the earth shake under his tyranny.
+
+Louis read of the facts and sayings that doled out the sad tale of
+disappointment felt by those who seemed to possess all that the
+wildest ambition could dream of.
+
+"Yesterday the world was not large enough for him," said a sage on the
+death of Alexander the Great; "to-day he is content with six feet
+of earth."
+
+"What a miserable tomb is erected to the man that once had temples
+erected to his honor!" sighed a philosopher on viewing a mean monument
+on the sea-shore erected to the great Pompey, who could raise armies
+by stamping his feet.
+
+"This is all the great Saladin brings to the grave," was announced by
+a courier who carried the great ruler's winding-sheet before him to
+the grave.
+
+"Would I had been a poor lay brother," cried out the dying Philip II.
+of Spain, "washing the plates in some obscure monastery, rather than
+have borne the crown of Spain!"
+
+That which took most effect on the mind of Louis was the eloquence of
+Ignatius when he met the young Xavier in the streets of Paris.  "And
+then?" asked by another saint of an ambitious youth, did not lose
+its force with the holy youth who found himself, by some freak of
+blind fortune heir to one of the millionaires of the French Capital.
+
+Louis, like St. Ignatius, would often stray to a shady corner of the
+garden, and there, with eyes fixed on the blue vault of heaven, he
+would sigh:  "Oh! quam sordet tellus dum coelum aspicio"--"How vile
+is earth whilst I look on heaven!"
+
+One evening Louis had wandered into the garden to give full vent to
+a flood of thought that urged him on to give immediate answer to the
+calls of grace.  God was pleased to pour additional light on his soul;
+and grace urged the immediate execution of his generous resolutions.
+That very morning the angry temper of his father and the bitter
+sarcasms against the faith Louis loved had embittered everything around
+his home.  In tears, but with the fearless ABANDON of the true call,
+he resolved to quit his father's home that very night, and to break
+his purpose to his mother.  She was the only one he really loved,
+and in wounding her tender heart was the hardest part of the sacrifice.
+In filial deference he prepared his mind to break the matter to his
+kind-hearted mother as gently as he could.  He would submit the
+resolution to our Blessed Lord in the most Holy Sacrament.
+
+Whilst going out to the venerable church of Notre Dame, a beautiful
+caleche is at the door, and two young girls, dressed in extravagant
+richness, are hurrying off to the fashionable rendezvous of the city;
+mildly refusing the invitation to accompany them, he hastens to
+accomplish the vows he has just taken before the altar.
+
+Leaving Louis to his devotions, we pause to catch a glimpse of the
+lovely girls who see happiness in another but less successful manner.
+The reader must know those interesting children bursting like fragrant
+flowers into the bloom of their maidenhood; they are the sisters of
+Louis, Alvira and Aloysia.  Read those traits of innocence, of
+character, of future promise; treasure the beautiful picture for future
+reference; they are the heroines of our story.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+Our Heroines.
+
+
+Alvira was tall for her age; she had a graceful, majestic carriage,
+and, although eminently handsome, there was a something in the tone
+of her voice and in the impression of her features that reflected a
+masculine firmness.  Accomplished and intelligent, gay in society,
+and affable to all, she was a general favorite amongst her school
+companions.  Yet she was at times of violent temper, and deep in the
+recesses of her heart there lurked the germs of the strongest passions.
+These passions, like lentils, grew with time and crept around that
+heart, until they concealed the noble trunk they clung to and made it
+their own.  Alvira was often crimsoned with the blush of passion; a
+gentle rebuke or a contradiction was sufficient to fire the hidden
+mine and send to the countenance the flash of haughty indignation.
+Whilst yet in her maidenhood she longed for distinction.  Fame leaped
+before her ardent imagination as a gilded bubble she loved to grasp.
+Tales of knight-errantry and chivalry were always in her hands, and
+bore their noxious fruit in the wild dreams of ambition they fired in
+the girl's mind.  Often, when alone with her sister, with book closed
+in her hand and eye fixed on some article of furniture, her thoughts
+would be away winning crowns of fame on battle-fields of her own
+creation, urging on gallant knights to deeds of bravery, or arranging
+with humbled foes the terms of peace.  She would start from her reverie
+with a sigh that told of the imprisonment of a bold, ambitious spirit
+that felt itself destined to wield a needle rather than a sword.
+
+Aloysia is a sweet, blooming girl of fourteen.  It often happens that
+fruits borne on the same stem are different in color and taste; so
+these two sisters were different in personal appearance and character.
+Nature seems to have presided in a special manner over the moulding
+of Aloysia's exquisite frame.  The symmetry of her person, hand and
+foot of charming delicacy, azure eye and rosy cheek, garlanded with
+nature's golden tresses, and the sweet expression of innocence in her
+features, would suggest her at once as a model for one of Raphael's
+Madonnas.  Her disposition, too, comported with the beauty of her
+person.  She loved retirement, and read only books of the noblest
+sentiment.  The poets were familiar to her; she copied and committed
+to memory the passages of exquisite beauty.  There was one feature in
+her character which bore a marked influence on her future destinies:
+it was her love for her sister.
+
+We do not believe at all times in the genuineness of brotherly or
+sisterly love.  Perhaps familiarity has deadened its keenness.  Like
+the appreciation of the sunlight which rushes with thrilling force on
+the victim of blindness, separation or misfortune may rouse the dormant
+affection and prove its nobility and its power; but in our experience
+manifest fraternal charity is one of those things even the wise man
+knew to be rare under the sun.  Where we have been privileged to look
+in behind the veil of the family circle, we are more convinced than
+ever that fraternal affection an all the boasted nobility of sisterly
+love dwindle down to a series of petty quarrels and jealousies as
+painful as they are unchristian and unbecoming.  The reserve, or rather
+the hypocrisy of politeness, put on before strangers, is no criterion
+of the inward domestic life.  Some one has said of ladies, "A point
+yielded or a pardon begged in public means so many hair-pullings
+behind the scenes."  But this is too sweeping; there are noble, glorious
+exceptions in families where religion reigns, where fraternal charity
+finds a congenial soil; for it blooms in the fragrance of the other
+virtues, and is the first characteristic of a pious family.  The world
+around are told to look for this as a sign by which they are to
+recognize the disciples of Him who loved so much.
+
+Aloysia, in a true, genuine feeling of love, was bound in adamantine
+chains to her sister.  Time and fortune, that shatter all human
+institutions and prove human feelings, consolidated the union of their
+hearts and their destinies.  A stranger on stronger proof of the
+influence of sisterly affection could not be adduced; it dragged the
+beautiful, blushing Aloysia from the sphere of girlhood, to follow
+in the track of hypocrisy and of bloodshed so desperately trodden by
+her brave sister.
+
+Our tale opens when the two girls had finished their education and
+were living in luxury and enjoyment.  The days and hours passed merrily
+by.  They would read in the shade, play and sing on the harp, would
+paint or work at wool, and in the afternoon, when the burning sun had
+left the world to the shade of evening, they would drive out in a
+magnificent attelage to the fashionable rendezvous of Paris.
+
+Dream too bright to last!  On the horizon is gathering the dark cloud
+that will dim the sunlight of their bliss, and cause them, in the dark
+and trying hour of trouble, to look back with the sigh of regret over
+the brilliant hours of youthful enjoyment.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+A Secret Revealed.
+
+
+  I thought to pass away before, and yet alive I am;
+  And in the fields all round I hear the bleating of the lamb.
+  How sadly, I remember, rose the morning of the year!
+  To die before the snow-drop came, and now the violet's here.
+
+  Oh! sweet is the new violet that comes beneath the skies
+  And sweeter is the young lamb's voice to me that cannot rise;
+  And sweet is all the land about, and all the flowers that blow;
+  And sweeter far is death than life to me that long to go.
+
+                                 --Tennyson.
+
+
+It was a bright, cheerful morning in June.  The sinking, feeble
+Madeleine had requested her domestics to carry her to the conservatory,
+that she might gaze again on the flowers that were soon to blossom
+on her grave.  Death had lingered in his approach.  The gay, the
+ambitious, and healthy he had taken all too soon; but for Madeleine,
+WHO LONGED TO GO, he tarried.  Her little violets had already given
+their first fragrant kiss to breezes that passed with no mournful
+cadence through the cypresses of the lonely cemetery.  Crumbling in
+her hand a faded rose, she breathed the thought so beautifully versified
+in after-times by the immortal bard of Erin:
+
+         So soon may I follow
+           When friendships decay,
+         And from love's shining circle
+           The gems drop away.
+         When true hearts lie withered
+           And fond ones are flown,
+         Oh! who would inhabit
+           This bleak world alone?
+
+The sentiment was prophetic: other flowers of affection will be withered
+by the vicissitudes of destiny; fond ones will flee, leaving the world
+a wilderness for her last hours!
+
+It often happens in the course of life that we are driven by some
+inexplicable fatality to suffer those very afflictions we dread the
+most.  We are told of persons who trembled for a lifetime at the horrid
+anticipation of being one day mad; it was the shadow of the judgement
+that was creeping on them, which cast them finally amongst the victims
+of the lunatic asylum.  The suicide is the prophet of his own doom;
+the presentiment of death by drowning has but too often ended in a
+watery grave.  Perhaps where the fibres of the heart are weakest, the
+strain brought on them by excited fancy snaps them in the misfortune
+that is dreaded; or perhaps some unseen spirit, charged with the decree
+of our individual sorrow, casts the dark shadow of his wing over our
+thoughts, and communicates the gloomy foreboding of a presentiment.
+They dying mother had one of these heart-tearing presentiments, so
+frequent and so mysterious in the history of human suffering.
+
+She was guilty of a species of maternal idolatry; centered in her child
+Louis Marie as rays gathered up into a focus, were all her hopes, her
+aspirations, her ideas of the future.  If she could be assured she
+would live to see her son leading the armies of the empire, ruling
+in the cabinets of state or worshipped in the circles of the great
+and learned, Heaven itself could not build up a greater joy in the
+limited horizon of her hopes; but an awful conviction crept over her
+that some misfortune would tear from her the object of her love like
+the fruit torn from the stem, like the young branch from the oak.  In
+dreams she saw him struggling in the torrent which bore him away, or
+dragged to the hills at the feet of a wild horse.  More than once she
+saw him on board a Government vessel, sailing with the hapless children
+of guilt to the convict settlements of southern seas--not as a felon,
+but an angel of light amongst the condemned.'
+
+Whilst Madeleine was sitting in the conservatory, musing over the gloomy
+anticipations her dreams had cast over her thoughts, Louis Marie came
+towards her.  A beam of joy lit up her hectic cheek; she impressed
+a kiss on the forehead of her darling son, and playfully reproved him
+for the dreams that gave her so much trouble.
+
+"Mother," we fancy we hear Louis reply, "you would not surely give
+much credence to the imaginary evils of a dream.  You know nothing can
+happen to us except by the arrangement of God; not even a hair can fall
+to the ground without his permission.  I remember in college I was
+very much delighted with a thesis one of the fathers gave us on the
+Providence of God; it was so strange and so consoling to think that
+great Being who created so many millions of worlds, and keeps them
+flying around him with immense velocity, could occupy himself with us
+human beings, who are no more than insects moving on this world, which
+is but a speck in the immensity of the universe.  But I know how it
+is--our souls are immortal, and hence we must soar higher than the
+countless worlds, were they ten times as great.  Our blessed Lord, by
+coming amongst us and dying to save those souls, showed us that he
+thought more of us than of the bird of the air or the lily of the
+field, clothed in such charming magnificence.  Is it unreasonable that,
+since he has given to each star a course, to each lily and each bird
+a time and a clime, he should also determine for us the course we
+should follow for his greater glory?  And what, mother, if some unseen,
+invisible destiny should really call me away; if it were for the glory
+of God and the salvation of souls, would you not rejoice?"
+
+Madeleine paused for a moment before venturing a reply.  She trembled;
+a struggle between affection and duty passed within.  Pleased with the
+rich flow of virtuous sentiment that made her still more proud of her
+child, she had caught the end of a golden thread and wished to unravel
+it further, but feared it would be snapped by some unpleasant discovery.
+Full of excitement, and her eyes filled with a penetrating, enquiring
+gaze upon Louis, she answered:
+
+"Louis, I should be false to the lessons I have endeavored to teach
+you in these last fleeting hours of my ill-spent life, were I not to
+rejoice in any destiny that would wrap up your future career in the
+glory of God; but I fear the enthusiasm of your young heart will
+misguide you.  I know, from the serious tone of your voice and look
+in asking that question, you have been feeling your way to make some
+crushing disclosure.  I saw you crying in the garden this afternoon,
+and for some time past I have noticed a cloud of anxiety hanging over
+you.  I had determined the first moment we were alone to know the cause
+of this trouble; and I now conjure you, by the affection and duty which
+you owe me as your mother, to let me share in your anxieties and in
+your councils."
+
+Louis had really come to broach the terrible secret to his mother, but
+he had not yet courage; he struggled manfully to suppress internal
+motions that might at any moment, like sullen rivers, overflow and
+betray their existence in a flood of tears.  Fearing to venture suddenly
+on the subject that was fullest in his heart, he partly evaded his
+mother's energetic appeal, and made such a reply as would elicit from
+her quick perception the declaration that trembled on his lips.
+
+"If war were declared with our frontier foes, and our beloved King
+commanded the youth of the country to gird on the sword for our national
+defence, you, mother, would help me to buckle on mine?"
+
+"Yes, Louis, I would give you proudly to the cause of France," continued
+Madeleine, feigning a patriotism she scarcely felt.  "But, thanks be
+to God, I am not called on now to claim an honor that is at best a
+sacrifice and a calamity."
+
+"But, mother, the war is declared, and I am to be a soldier in a sacred
+cause."
+
+"How!" cried Madeleine excitedly.  "Are the followers of the Black
+Prince again attacking us?  The Turks seeking revenge for the defeat
+of Lepanto? or Christian Spain still intoxicated with its own dream
+of ambition?  Whence come the sound of arms, Louis, to fire thy young
+ambition?  If I judge rightly, thy disposition leads thee more to
+the cloister than to the battle-field."
+
+"'Tis so," replied Louis, who had adroitly brought the conversation
+to the subject that occupied his thoughts, and to the announcement
+that would ring with such thrill on his mother's ears.  "And I am
+going to join a religious community immediately, to become a soldier
+in the great war of right against wrong--of this world against the
+next.  To this war the trumpet-calls of grace have summoned me, and
+I come to ask the mother who would give me to the cause of my country
+to do the same for Almighty God."
+
+A step was heard outside.  Louis glided into the garden, and Madeleine
+was again found by her husband buried in tears.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+Tears on Earth, Joy in Heaven.
+
+
+Madeleine, with all the keenness of her maternal heart, had caught
+the drift of Louis' mind, and felt the disclosure before it was made.
+A rough, rude remark from Cassier, and he left her to the silence and
+reflection she then vehemently desired.  Reflection, in bringing before
+her a beautiful but sad picture, crumbled before her mental vision the
+castles that her affection and her hopes had built on the shadowy
+basis of Louis' future temporal glory.  She felt, however, from the
+inspiration of faith a feeling of spiritual joy that he was called to
+the higher destiny of a favorite of Heaven.  Had the fire of divine
+love glowed more fervently in her heart, she would feel the joy of
+ecstasy, such as consoled the death-bled of the mothers of the saints
+when the revelation of the sanctity of their children was the last
+crown of earthly joy.  Anticipating the privilege the fond maternal
+heart would fain claim even in the kingdom free from all care, Madeleine
+often found herself contemplating her son fighting the brave fight,
+winning crown upon crown, and virtue flinging around him a shield more
+impenetrable than the fabulous Aegis of pagan mythology.
+
+In the flippant boastings of Christian mothers there are many who
+pretend they have the fire of faith and divine love like the brave
+Machabean woman; but when the sore hour of real separation comes, the
+soft, loving heart bends and weeps.  Nature, corrupt nature, resists
+the arrangements of God, and nature triumphs in the maternal tie.  The
+spirit of Madeleine had made the sacrifice of her son, but the rude
+hand of nature swept the fibres of her heart and tore them asunder.
+
+Night has gathered around the house of Cassier.  Sleep has brought the
+silence of the tomb on the inmates.  One alone is awake; gentle sobs
+tell of a heart struggling with its own desires, but a faint ray of
+moonlight shows him seeking strength on his knees before a crucifix.
+
+Guide him, ye angels, in the sublime destiny to which Heaven calls!
+Treasure up those tears of affection; they are pearls for a crown in
+eternity!  A long, farewell look at the old homestead, and Louis has
+fled.
+
+In the night, when all were asleep, he stole down-stairs and into the
+silent street.  The moon brightened the tears of his farewell; only
+his guardian angel saw to register for his eternal crown, the inward
+struggle in which he had trampled on every tie of affection and
+pleasure.  Disappearing in the narrow streets, he disappears also from
+the pages of our narrative until, in the extraordinary vicissitudes
+of time, he makes his appearance again in a scene both touching and
+edifying.
+
+The morning dawn revealed the broken circle, the vacant chair in the
+family.  Cassier was confused.  Whilst others wept he moved about in
+deep thought.  Stoic in his feelings and hardened in sympathies, he
+still felt all the tender anxieties of an affectionate parent.  There
+are moments in the career of even the greatest sinners when sleeping
+conscience is roused to remorse.  The shock the old man received in
+the loss of his amiable child opened his eyes to the unhappy state of
+his own soul; every act of ridicule he cast on the religious tendencies
+of Louis became arrows of memory to sting him with regret.
+
+But these were transient moments of a better light.  As meteors, darting
+across the sky, illumine for a few seconds the dark vault of heaven,
+and in the sudden exit of their brilliant flash seem to leave greater
+darkness in the night, thus the impulses of grace shot across the soul
+of Cassier; he struggled in the grasp of an unseen power, but suddenly
+lapsed into the awful callousness which characterizes the relapses of
+confirmed guilt; he pretended to smile at his weakness, and found a
+sorry relief in cursing and scoffing at everything the virtuous love.
+
+Yet he offered immense rewards for information that would bring him in
+presence of the boy whose form he loved, but whose virtue he despised.
+Like the pagan persecutors of old, he vainly hoped, by fear or the
+tinsel of gold, to win back to the world and sin the magnanimous youth
+who had broken through the stronger argument of a mother's tears.
+Messengers were dispatched in every direction; the police scoured the
+roads for miles outside the city; friends and acquaintances were warned
+not to harbor the truant.
+
+A week passed, and no cheerful tidings came to lessen the gloom of
+bereavement.  That Providence which made Louis a vessel of election
+had covered him with its protective shield, and bore him like a vessel
+under propitious winds to the port of his destination.
+
+In all the soft tenderness of girlhood the two sisters lamented their
+absconding brother.  They, too, had been unkind to him.  The sweet,
+patient smile that ever met their taunts, the mild reproof when they
+concealed his beads or prayer-book, his willingness to oblige on all
+occasions, were remembered with tears.  When sitting by the mother's
+bed, the conversation invariably turned on Louis.  In cruel fancy
+they deepened the real sorrow of separation by casting imaginary
+misfortunes on the track of the absent boy.  One would sigh with the
+ominous PERHAPS.
+
+"Poor Louis is now hungry!"
+
+"Perhaps he is now lying sick and footsore on the side of some highway,
+without a friend, without money."
+
+"Perhaps he has fallen in with robbers and is stripped of the few
+articles of dress he took with him."
+
+"Perhaps he is now sorry for leaving us," sighed the tender-hearted
+Aloysia, "and would give the world to kiss again his poor sick mamma!"
+
+But futile tears flowed with each surmise.  No welcome messenger
+returned to bring tidings of the missing youth.
+
+'Tis thus we love virtue; we sigh over departed worth when its
+brilliancy has faded from our sight.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+Madeleine's Happy Death.
+
+
+Troubles, like migratory birds, never travel alone.  As heavier billows
+cling together and roll in rapid succession and in thundering force
+on the rock-built barriers of nature, so the waves of trial and
+misfortune break on frail humanity in crushing proximity.  The second
+and third billows of misfortune are fast undulating on the tide of time,
+and will sweep over the home of Cassier, leaving it a miserable wreck,
+a theme for the sympathy and the moral of a historian's pen.
+
+The weakened, consumptive frame of Madeleine did not long survive the
+blow that Louis had prepared for her--not, indeed, in the sense of a
+guilty and blood-stained hand, but with the merit of an Abraham who,
+at the command of Heaven, prepared a funeral pyre for his child.
+Madeleine could scarcely weep; the grief of nature was calmed by the
+impulses of grace, and she felt in her heart a holy joy in the sublime
+destinies of her son.  Could we, in the face of the holy teachings of
+the Church, institute a comparison between the mother of the soldier
+and the mother of a priest?  Amidst sighs that were but the convulsive
+throes of a heart's emotion, she breathed often and aloud the "Deo
+gratias" of the faithful soul.
+
+But like certain forces in nature that require but the slightest shock
+to give them irresistible power, by which they burst through their
+confining cells and set themselves free, the immortal spirit of
+Madeleine burst its prison cell and soared to its home beyond the skies.
+
+We need not tarry over the painful, touching scene oft-told, and felt
+sooner or later in every home.  Like snow disappearing under the
+sunshine, the life of Madeleine was fast melting away.  At length, as
+if she knew when the absorbing heat would melt the last crystal of the
+vital principle, she summoned her family around her to wish them that
+last thrilling farewell which is never erased from the tablet of memory.
+In the farewell of the emigrant, torn by cruel fate from country and
+friends, hope smiles in his tears; the fortune that drives away can
+bring back; but the farewell of death leaves no fissure in its cloud
+for the gleam of hope--it is final, terrible, and, on this side the
+grave, irrevocable.
+
+With faltering voice she doled out the last terrible warning that speaks
+so eloquently from the bed of death.
+
+Whilst the aged priest recited the Litanies she raised her last, dying
+looks towards heaven, and whispered loud enough to be heard, "O Mary!
+pray for my children."
+
+Madeleine was no more.  Her last sigh was a prayer that went like
+lightning to the throne of God from a repentant, reconciled spirit; at
+the same moment her liberated soul had travelled the vast gulf between
+time and eternity, and there, in the books held by the guardian angels
+of her children, she saw registered the answer to her prayer.
+
+Madeleine was laid in a marble tomb amongst the first occupants of
+Pere la Chaise.  A small but artistic monument, still extant, and not
+far from the famous tomb of Abelard and Eloise, would point out to the
+curious or interested where sleeps among the great of the past the
+much-loved Madeleine Cassier.
+
+   "God's peace be with her!" they did say,
+   And laughed at their next breath.
+   O busy world! how poor is thy display
+   Of sympathy with death.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX.
+
+One Abyss Invokes Another.
+
+
+In times gone by, in the so-called darkness of the Middle Ages, there
+were certain countries in Europe that believed in the existence of a
+fiend or ghoul that inhabited lonely places and unfrequented woods,
+and tore to pieces the imprudent traveller that ventured on its path.
+This fiend of the desert and lonely wood was at best but a fabrication
+of an excited fancy; it has long since passed away with the myths of
+the past, and exists only in the nursery rhymes of our literature.
+Yet in its place a malignant spirit of evil revels in the ruin of the
+human race; it delights in the crowd; it loves the gaslight, the
+lascivious song and wanton dance; it presides over our convivial
+banquets with brow crowned with ivy and faded roses; whilst all the
+unholy delights of earth sacrifice to it, in return it scatters amongst
+its adorers all the ills and sorrows that flow from the curse of Eden,
+making a libation to the infernal gods of the honor, the fortune, and
+the lives of men.  The ghoul or fiend of modern society is the demon
+of alcohol.
+
+History records a remarkable victim in the ill fated Cassier.  When
+grief falls on the irreligious soul, it seeks relief in crime.  The
+shadow of death that fell on his family circle, and the flight of his
+son in daring forgetfulness of his parental authority, which he had
+overrated, broke the last link of Christian forbearance in his
+unbelieving heart; when wearied of blaspheming the providence of God,
+he quaffed the fatal cup which hell gives as a balm to its
+sorrow-stricken votaries.
+
+A cloud of oblivion must hide from the tender gaze of the young and the
+innocent the harrowing scenes that brought misery on his home, ruin on
+his financial condition, and a deeper hue to the moral depravity of
+his blighted character.
+
+One look of sympathy at our young heroines, and we will pass on to the
+thrilling course of events.
+
+Like beautiful yachts on a stormy lake, without pilot, without hands
+to steady the white sail to catch the favorable wind, Alvira and Aloysia
+were tossed on a sea of trial which cast a baneful shadow over their
+future destinies.  Tears had cast the halo of their own peculiar beauty
+over their delicate features; mourning and sombre costume wrapt around
+them the gravity of sorrow and the adulation of a universal sympathy,
+pretended or real, supplied the attentions that flattered and pleased
+when they led the giddy world of fashion.  The silence of grief hung
+around the magnificent saloons, once so gay; the wardrobe that contained
+the costly apparel, the casket that treasured the pearls of Ceylon and
+gems of Golconda, were all closed and neglected.  The treatment of
+their father was an agony of domestic trouble, in which they were tried
+as in a furnace.
+
+A few weeks, however, and the darkest hour of the storm had passed.
+Moments of relaxation brought beams of sunlight through the dissolving
+beams of sunlight through the dissolving clouds; drives, walks, and
+even visits were gradually resumed.
+
+A fit of illness brought Cassier to his senses.  A forced abstinence
+for a few weeks saved him from the last and most terrible lot of
+confirmed drunkenness; but ruin was written with his own hand on the
+firm that made him wealthy.  Quick-footed rumor, that hates the
+well-being of man, was abroad at its deadly work; public confidence in
+the bank began to wane, and each depositor lent the weight of his
+individual interest to accelerate the financial crash.  The stone set in
+motion down the mountain assumes a force that no power could stay; on it
+will go until it rests in the plain  From the eminence of his boasted
+wealth the usurer found this turn come to whirl around on the wheel of
+fortune and yield to some other mortal, who is the toy of fortune, to
+grasp for a moment the golden key of avarice and ambition.
+
+At length the crash has come.  One of the largest depositors sends
+notice that in a week he will withdraw his funds.
+
+Cassier saw ruin staring him in the face; when this sum was paid he
+would be a pauper.  He would not dig, and in the pride of his heart
+he would not beg.  Conscience, long seared in the path of impiety, has
+no voice to warn, no staff to strike.  Cassier, wise in his generation
+of dishonesty, knows what he will do, and nerves himself for a
+desperate undertaking which leads us deeper and deeper into the history
+of crime, into the abysses of iniquity which invoke each other.
+
+In a few days Paris is startled.  Cassier has fled, and robbed his
+creditors of a million francs.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X.
+
+On the Trail.
+
+
+Evening has fallen over the city, and the busy turmoil of the streets
+had ceased; the laborer had repaired to his family, the wealthy had
+gone to their suburban villas, and licentious youth had sought the
+amusements over which darkness draws its veil.  Politicians,
+newsmongers, and travellers made the cafe salons ring with their
+animated discussions.  The policy of the Prime Minister, the
+probabilities of war, the royal sports of Versailles, and daring deeds
+of crime gathered from the police reports were inexhaustive topics for
+debate.
+
+In one of the popular cafes there was a small gathering of men
+threatening vengeance on the delinquent Cassier; they had more or less
+suffered from his robbery, and they listened with avidity to every
+rumor that might lead to the probability of his capture.  Amongst them
+there was an aged man of grayish beard, who was particularly loud and
+zealous in his condemnation of the dishonest banker.  He railed against
+the Government, which, he said, was priest-ridden under the whip of
+Mazarin; the imbecility of the police; and the apathy of the citizens,
+who bore so peaceably such glaring acts of injustice and imposition.
+He poured out a volume of calumny against the priesthood, and blasphemed
+so as to cast a chill of terror through his less impious hearers.
+
+He was suddenly stopped in his harangue by the entrance of a stranger
+in the coffee-room.  He was a tall, thin man, wrapped in an over-cloak;
+he paced majestically across the room, and took a seat opposite the
+old man, who had suddenly become silent and was busily occupied reading
+the criminal bulletin.  Over the edges of his paper the old man took
+a furtive glance at the stranger; their eyes met; a recognition
+followed, but as silent and as deep as with the criminal and the Masonic
+judge.
+
+The old man rang the bell, and called for writing materials.  He hastily
+scribbled a few words, closed, sealed the letter, then bade the waiter
+take it to his eldest son, who had retired to his apartments.  He
+immediately took his hat and went out.
+
+"Who is that old man?" asked the tall stranger, rising and advancing
+excitedly towards the waiter.
+
+"That's Senor Pereira from Cadiz," retorted the waiter.
+
+"Senor Pereira from Cadiz!" repeated the stranger.  "No," he continued
+emphatically; "he is Senor Cassier from Paris."
+
+"Cassier!" was muttered by the astounded debaters who had listened to
+the vituperative philippics of the Portuguese merchant.
+
+"Cassier!" was echoed from the furthest end of the salon, where some
+quiet and peaceful citizens were sipping their coffee and rum apart
+from the stormy politics of the centre-table.
+
+Whilst an animated conversation was carried on two young lads came
+running down-stairs and rushed into the street through the front door.
+
+"Who are those young men?" asked again the stranger of the waiter.
+
+"They are the sons of Senor Pereira," was the answer.
+
+"The sons of Pereira!  They are the daughters of Cassier!" said the
+stranger in a loud voice, who had now become the hero of the room and
+had penetrated a deep and clever plot.
+
+He ran to the street, but the fugitives had disappeared in the darkness;
+their gentle tread was not heard on the pavement, and no observer was
+near to indicate the course they had taken.  The whole scheme of
+Cassier's bold disguise flashed with unerring conviction on the
+stranger's mind--the voice, the eye, the gait were Cassier's.  He was
+familiar with the family, and in the hurried glance he got of the
+youths rushing by the saloon door he thought he recognized the contour
+of Alvira's beautiful face.  He hastened to communicate his startling
+discovery to the Superintendent of the Police, and the city was once
+more in a state of excitement.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI.
+
+The Flight.
+
+
+The sensation caused by the startling failure and embezzlement of the
+wealthy banker had scarcely subsided when the city rang with the news
+of his clever disguise and daring escape.  Angry Justice, foiled in her
+revenge, lashed herself to rage, and moaned her defeat like the forest
+queen robbed of her young.  The Government feared the popular cry,
+and proved its zeal by offering immense rewards for the arrest of the
+delinquent banker.  The country around the city was guarded, every
+suspicious vehicle examined, and strangers ran the risk of being mobbed
+before they could prove their identity.  False rumors now and then ran
+through the city, raising and quelling the passions like a tide.  At
+one time the culprit is caught and safely lodged in the Bastile; at
+another he is as free as the deer on the plains.  Cassier did escape,
+but some incidents of the chase were perilous and exciting.
+
+Travelling in those days was slow and difficult.  The giant steam-engines
+that now sweep over hills and torrents with a speed that rivals the
+swoop of the sea-bird were unknown.  The rickety old diligence or
+stage-coach was only found on the principal thoroughfares between the
+large cities.
+
+Cassier knew these roads would be the first taken in pursuit, and
+carefully avoided them.  Seeking a destination where the chances of
+detection would be lessened, he was attracted towards Geneva, already
+famous as the hot-bed of secret societies and the rallying-point of
+infidelity.  He would reach it by a circuitous route.  From Paris to
+the historic old capital of Switzerland, in the centre of mountains
+and the heart of Europe, was a herculean journey for the fugitives.
+
+On they went for two and three days' journey, stopping at humble inns
+on the roadside where the news of the capital had not reached.  Time
+inured them to danger and calmed the fever of anxiety consequent upon
+their hurried and hazardous flight.
+
+But the avenging law had followed in close pursuit.  The officers of the
+Government were directed from village to village; they found themselves
+on the track of an old man and two beardless youths in naval cadet
+costume.  The chase became exciting.  Wealth and fame awaited their
+capture.
+
+One evening, in the glow of a magnificent sunset, Cassier and his
+daughters were wending their way along one of the picturesque roads
+of the Cote d'Or.  They were on the slope of a shady mountain, and
+through a vista of green foliage they could see the road they had
+passed for miles in the distance.  The silence of the mountainside
+was unbroken, save by the music of wild birds and the roar of a torrent
+that leaped through the moss-covered rocks towards the valley.  The
+wild flowers gave aromatic sweetness to the mountain-breeze, and the
+orb of day, slowly sinking in a bank of luminous crimson clouds in the
+distant horizon, made the scene all that could be painted by the most
+brilliant fancy.  Our young heroines gave frequent expression to their
+delight, but their aged sire was silent and watchful.  He frequently
+took long and piercing looks on the road he had passed.  Anxiety
+mantled on his wrinkled brow; a foreboding of danger cast its prophetic
+gloom over his spirits.
+
+Suddenly he turned from a long, fixed look through the trees, and with
+a thrill of alarm cried out:  "They are coming!"
+
+For a moment he gave the jaded horses the whip.  He refused any further
+information to the terrified girls; he bit his lip, drew his sword
+close to him, and prepared for a struggle; for he had resolved to die
+rather than go back a prisoner to Paris.
+
+The pursuers were each moment gaining ground; the costume of the
+gendarmes was discernible as they galloped in a cloud of dust along
+the plain.  The hill was long and heavy before the wearied horses of
+Cassier.  He saw flight was vain; stratagem must come to his aid in
+the emergency.
+
+At this moment he came to a turn in the mountain road where the trees
+were thicker and the shade more dense.  Like a skilful general in the
+critical moment when victory and defeat hang, as it were, on the cast
+of a die, he conceived instantaneously the plan of a desperate
+expedient.  He drew up his horses and bade his trembling children await
+his return.
+
+Returning a few paces he secreted himself behind an oak-tree and calmly
+awaited the arrival of the Government officers.
+
+Soon the clatter of the galloping horses was heard in the distance.
+The wild scream of startled birds resounded through the groves; the
+sun seemed to glow in a deeper crimson, the breezes sighed a mournful
+cadence through the waving foliage.  On the troopers came up the side
+of the hill.  Cassier had counted them--they are but two; despair has
+lent courage to his heart, and will give a giant stroke to his aged
+arm.
+
+At the sight of the suspected caleche drawn up in the shady road, one
+of the pursuing officers gave spurs to his horse, and flew out before
+his companion to seize the prey--to be the first captor of the
+delinquent fugitive.  Fatal indiscretion!  Plunging along at desperate
+speed, and dreaming of gold and renown, the burnished sword of Cassier
+took his horse on the flank.  Its rider fell to the earth; before he
+had seen his enemy, the sword of Cassier had pierced his heart.
+
+A scream from the carriage announced that the scene had been witnessed
+by tender girls who had not been accustomed to deeds of violence and
+bloodshed.  But the combat has now but commenced.  The battle of the
+Horatii and Curatii, on which an empire depended, was not more fierce.
+
+The second gendarme saw the fate of his companion; he reined his horse,
+dismounted, and came with drawn sword to meet the Parisian banker, who
+had now become a mountain bandit.
+
+When Greek met Greek in the days of old, the earth trembled.  Never
+was more equal or deadly fight.  Cassier had learned the sword exercise
+in his youth as a useful art; the police officer was a swordsman from
+profession.  For a moment sparks flew from the whirling, burnished
+blades.  The silence of deep resolve wrapt the features of the
+combatant in fierce rigidity.  Again and again they struck and parried,
+struck and parried, until wearied nature gave feeble response to the
+maddened soul.  The aged Cassier felt, from his age and fatigue, about
+to succumb; gathering all his strength for a desperate effort, he
+threw his weight into a well-measured shoulder stroke, when, lo! his
+antagonist's sword flew in pieces--the brave gendarme fell weltering
+in the blood of his murdered companion.
+
+All is still again.  The sun has gone down in murky splendor, the birds
+are silent, and the solitude of the wild mountain-pass is like the
+night, that is darker after the flash of the meteor.  The hapless but
+brave soldiers of justice lie in their armor on the field of battle;
+the fresh blood gurgles from the gaping wounds, and the madness of
+defeat is fiercely stamped on their bronzed features; one holds in
+death-grasp the unsheathed sword he had not time to wield, the other
+sill stares with open eye on the broken blade that proved his ruin.
+
+A heavy splash and a crimson streak in the foam announce that the
+torrent has become the grave of the fallen police; the road, steeped
+with blood, is covered with fresh earth; the scene that witnessed the
+tragedy is fair and beautiful as before.  Cassier, reassured, with
+bold step and pulse of pride, turns towards his conveyance to resume
+his journey.
+
+Aloysia was just recovering from a fainting fit, and her sister had
+labored to restore her during the exciting moments of the deadly strife
+that had just been concluded.  Neither of them saw the perilous
+situation of their father, and were thus saved the shock the extremity
+of his peril was calculated to have produced.
+
+A few days found them safely across the frontiers of France, threading
+the passes of the Alps, and away from the grasp of justice, that pursued
+them in vain.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII.
+
+Geneva.
+
+
+As the wearied stag that has eluded the chasing dogs rests in safety
+in the covert of its native mountains, our fugitives at length breathed
+freely in the beautiful city of Geneva.  Wild and grand as had been
+the scenery they passed through, the excitement of the flight and the
+fear of seizure had, to them, robbed nature of her charms.  Ever and
+anon, indeed, they had looked around with searching eyes, but not to
+gaze in rapture on the snow-capped mountains, the green valleys, and
+crystal streams; it was rather to peer along the road they had passed,
+to see if any speck on the horizon would indicate the pursuing horses
+of the gendarmes.  But now for the first time the magnificence of the
+Alpine scenery and the charm of the lovely queen of the Swiss valleys
+burst on their view.  Mont Blanc, already seen from the north, seemed
+to lift its snowy drapery higher into the blue sky, and stood out more
+majestic in its crystallized peaks when seen from the bridges of the
+Rhone.  Another firmament was seen through the clear azure water of
+the beautiful lake; and although the air was cold and fresh in the icy
+chill of the mountains, and nature stripped of her green, yet our
+young heroines were charmed with their first view of the city, and
+rejoiced in the prospect of a long sojourn.
+
+There are few spots in the world where the lovers of the sublimities
+of nature can drink in such visual feasts as at Geneva.  Since railways
+have shortened distance and cut through mountains, there is no more
+fashionable rendezvous for the world of art than the suburbs of the
+Swiss capital.  During the summer months every little nook on the
+surrounding mountain-sides is occupied by artists of every sex and of
+every nation.  What juvenile album is complete without a sketch of
+Mont Blanc?  The old mountain stands out in its eternal majesty as a
+vision of awful beauty for old and young; and many a noble soul has
+been borne from the contemplation of the grandeur of nature to study
+in awe the greatness of Him "who makes mountains his footstools."  The
+artificial beauties of the modern Geneva far surpass the old; yet those
+mountains, those peaks and snows and lakes, were always there.  It was
+known to Constantine, and crept into importance and worth in proportion
+as science and art were developed in the civilization of Europe.
+
+At the time we write the beautiful Swiss capital was one of the
+principal seats of learning in Europe.  But, alas! its literature was
+blasted by the false principles of the Reformation.  Like marble
+cenotaphs that have corruption within, Geneva, clothed with all the
+beauties of nature and art, was rotten to the core in her moral and
+religious character.  She became the mother of heresiarchs, the theatre
+of infidelity, and by her press and preaching scattered far and wide
+the wildest theories of deism and unbelief.  All the secret societies
+of the world were represented in her lodges, and within her walls,
+were gathered men of desparate and socialistic politics who had sworn
+to overturn as far as they could the authority of society, to despise
+the rights of property, and to trample on the laws of order.  There
+was no city in the world guilty of more blasphemy than this beautiful
+Geneva; and even to this day, as the sins of fathers descend to their
+children, the teachings of Calvin, of Bayle, and of Servetus hang like
+a chronic curse over the city to warp every noble feeling of Christian
+virtue.
+
+Amongst the leaders of the secret societies, amongst the socialists
+who plot the ruin of their fellow-citizens, and amongst the infidels
+who blasphemously ridicule the mysteries of Christianity, we must now
+seek the unfortunate Cassier, who has arrived in Geneva.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII.
+
+The Secret Societies.
+
+
+To outsiders Masonry is a mystery.  When Masons speak or write of
+themselves they give the world to understand the are but a harmless
+union for mutual benefit, and for the promotion of works of benevolence.
+That such is the belief of many individuals in the lower grades of
+Masonry, and even of some lodges amongst the thousands scattered over
+the face of the earth, we have no doubt; but that charity in its varied
+branches has been either the teaching or the fact amongst the great
+bulk of Freemasons during the last two hundred years we unhesitatingly
+deny.
+
+In the ceremony of making a master-mason, and in a dark room, with a
+coffin in the centre covered with a pall, the brethren standing around
+in attitudes denoting grief and sorrow, the mysterious official who
+has the privilege of three stars before his name gives the aspirant
+this interesting history of the origin and aim of his office.
+
+"Over the workmen who were building the temple erected by Solomon's
+orders there presided Adoniram.  There were about 3,000 workmen.  That
+each one might receive his due, Adoniram divided them into three
+classes--apprentices, fellow-craftsmen, and masters.  He entrusted
+each class with a word, signs, and a grip by which they might be
+recognized.  Each class was to preserve the greatest secrecy as to
+these signs and words.  Three of the fellow-crafts, wishing to know
+the word of the master, and by that means obtain his salary, hid
+themselves in the temple, and each posted himself at a different gate.
+At the usual time when Adoniram came to shut the gates of the temple,
+the first of the three fellow-crafts met him, and demanded the word
+of the masters.  Adoniram refused to give it, and received a violent
+blow with a stick on the head.  He flies to another gate, is met,
+challenged, and treated in a similar manner by the second.  Flying to
+the third door, he is killed by the fellow-craft posted there on his
+refusing to betray the word.  His assassins bury him under a heap of
+ruins, and mark the spot with a branch of acacia.
+
+"Adoniram's absence gives great uneasiness to Solomon and the masters.
+He is sought for everywhere; at length one of the masters discovers
+a corpse, ad, taking it by the finger, the finger parts from the hand;
+he takes it by the wrist, and it parts from the arm; when the master
+in astonishment, cries out 'Mac Benac,' which the craft interprets by
+the words, 'The flesh parts from the bones.'"
+
+The history finished, the adept is informed that the object of the
+degree which he has just received is to recover the word lost by the
+death of Adoniram, and to revenge this martyr of the Masonic secrecy.
+
+Thousands of years have rolled over since the alleged death of the
+clerk of works at Solomon's temple, and if the streams of human blood
+that his would-be avengers have caused to flow have not satiated this
+blood-thirsty shade, those that Masons, Communists, Internationals,
+and other secret societies will yet cause to flow in the cities of
+Europe will surely avenge the ill fated Adoniram.
+
+It is also asserted by some Masons of strong powers of imagination
+that they take their origin from the Eleusinian Mysteries.  These were
+pagan orgies attached to some Grecian temples.  Surrounded by mysterious
+ceremonies and symbols, and supported by every mythical and allegorical
+illusion that could inspire awe or confidence, these mysteries were
+very popular amongst the Greeks.
+
+"The mysteries of Eleusis," says the profound German mythologist,
+Creuzer, "did not only teach resignation, but, as we see by the verses
+of Homer to Ceres sung on those occasions, they afforded consoling
+promises of a better futurity.  'Happy is the mortal,' it is said there,
+'who hath been able to contemplate these grand scenes!  But he who
+hath not taken part in these holy ceremonies is fore ever deprived of
+a like lot, even when death has drawn him down into its gloomy abodes.'"
+
+Harmless and absurd as these mysteries were in the commencement, they
+afterwards lapsed into all the immoralities of pagan worship.  But
+to give such a remote, and even such a noble, origin to the frivolous
+deism of modern Masonry is about as absurd as to say that men were
+at one time all monkeys.
+
+The truth is, Freemasonry was never heard of until the latter part of
+the Middle Ages.  It found its infancy among the works of the great
+cathedral of Strasburg.  Erwin of Steinbach, the leading architect
+employed in the erection of this beautiful and stupendous work of
+architectural beauty, called around him other noted men from the
+different cities of Germany, Switzerland, and France; he formed the
+first lodge.  The members became deputies for the formation of lodges
+in other cities, and thus in 1459 the heads of these lodges assembled
+at Ratisbon, and drew up their Act of Incorporation, which instituted
+in perpetuity the lodge of Strasburg as the chief lodge, and its
+president as the Grand Master of the Freemasons of Germany.
+
+The masters, journeymen, and apprentices formed a corporation having
+special jurisdiction in different localities.  In order not to be
+confounded with the vulgar mechanics who could only use the hammer
+and the trowel, the Freemasons invented signs of mutual recognition
+and certain ceremonies of initiation.  A traditionary secret was handed
+down, revealed to the initiated, and that only according to the degrees
+they had attained.  They adopted for symbols the square, the level,
+the compass, and the hammer.  In some lodges and in higher grades
+(for they differ almost in every nation) we find the Bible, compass,
+and square only.  But the Bible given to the aspirant he is to
+understand he is to acknowledge no other law but that of Adam--the
+law which Almighty god had engraved on his heart, and which is called
+the law of nature (thereby rejecting the laws of the Church and
+society).  The compass recalls to his mind that God is the central
+point of everything, from which everything is equally distant, and to
+which everything is equally near.  By the square he is to learn that
+God made everything equal.  The drift of these symbolic explanations
+is obvious.
+
+In the ceremonies of initiation into the various degrees everything
+was devised that could strike the imagination, awaken curiosity, or
+excite terror.  The awful oath that has been administered in some
+Continental lodges would send a thrill of horror through every
+right-minded person, whilst the lugubrious ceremonies the aspirant has
+to pass elicit a smile--such, for instance, of leading the young Mason
+with bandaged eyes around the inner temple, and in the higher grades
+presenting him with a dagger, which he is to plunge into a manikin
+stuffed with bladders full of blood, and declare that thus he will be
+avenged of the death of Adoniram!  Then he is instructed in the code
+of secret signals by which he can recognize a brother on the street,
+on the bench, or on the field of battle.  Carousing till midnight is
+a befitting finale to the proceedings of the lodge.
+
+The doctrines or religious code of the Masons are, as their symbols
+indicate, deistic and anti-Christian.  They openly shake off the
+control of all religion, and pretend to be in possession of a secret
+to make men better and happier than Christ, his apostles, and his
+Church have made them or can make them.  "The pretension," says
+Professor Robertson, "is monstrous!"
+
+How is this exoteric teaching consistent with the full and final
+revelation of divine truths?  If in the deep midnight of heathenism
+the sage had been justified in seeking in the mysteries of Eleusis
+for a keener apprehension of the truths of primitive religion, how
+does this justify the Mason, in the midday effulgence of Christianity,
+in telling mankind he has a wonderful secret for advancing them in
+virtue and happiness--a secret unknown to the incarnate God, and to
+the Church with which he has promised the Paraclete should abide for
+ever?  And even the Protestant, who rejects the teaching of that
+unerring Church, if he admits Christianity to be a final revelation,
+must scout the pretensions of a society that claims the possession
+of moral truths unknown to the Christian religion.
+
+Whatever may have been the original cast of the religious views of
+the Masonic order, it is certain in its development it has become
+impious and blaspheming.  In the latter part of the seventeenth century
+the Masonic lodges were the hot-beds of sedition and revolution; and
+long before the popes from their high watch-tower of the Vatican had
+hurled on these secret gatherings the anathema of condemnation, they
+were interdicted in England by the Government of Queen Elizabeth;
+they were checked in France by Louis XV. (1729); they were prescribed
+in Holland in 1735, and successively in Flanders, in Sweden, in Poland,
+in Spain, in Portugal, in Hungary, and in Switzerland.  In Vienna, in
+1743, a lodge was burst into by soldiers.  The Freemasons had to give
+up their swords and were conducted to prison; but as there were
+personages of high rank among them, they were let free on parole and
+their assemblies finally prohibited.  These facts prove there was
+something more than mutual benefit associations in Masonry.  "When we
+consider," says M. Picot, "that Freemasonry was born with irreligion;
+that it grew up with it; that it has kept pace with its progress; that
+it has never pleased any men but those who were impious or indifferent
+about religion; and that it has always been regarded with disfavor
+by zealous Catholics, we can only regard it as an institution bad in
+itself and dangerous in its effects."
+
+Robinson of Edinburgh, who was a Protestant and at on time a Mason
+himself, says: "I believe no ordinary brother will say that the
+occupations of the lodges are anything better than frivolous, very
+frivolous indeed.  The distribution of charity needs to be no secret,
+and it is but a small part of the employment of the meeting.  Mere
+frivolity can never occupy men come to age, and accordingly we see in
+every part of Europe where Freemasonry has been established the lodges
+have become seed-beds of public mischief."
+
+This was particularly true of the lodges of the central cities of
+Europe in the latter part of the seventeenth century.  They were not
+only politically obnoxious to governments, but they became the agents
+and supporters of all the heretical theories of the day, and their evil
+effects were felt in the domestic circle.  Like animals that hate the
+light and crawl out from their hiding-places when the world is abandoned
+by man, the members of those impious gatherings passed their nights in
+mysterious conclave.  Fancy can paint the scene:  weak-minded men of
+every shade of unbelief, men of dishonest and immoral sentiments, men
+who, if justice had her due, should have swung on the gallows or eked
+out a miserable existence in some criminal's cell, joined in league
+to trample on the laws and constitution of order, and, in the awful
+callousness of intoxication, uttering every blasphemous and improper
+thought the evil one could suggest.  What must have been the character
+of the homes that received such men after their midnight revels?  Many
+a happy household has been turned into grief through their demoralizing
+influence; mothers, wives, and daughters have often, in the lonely
+hours of midnight, sat up with a scanty light and a dying fire awaiting
+the late return of a son, a husband, or a brother; with many a sigh
+they would trace the ruin of their domestic felicity and the wreck of
+their family to some lodge of the secret societies.
+
+Before appealing to facts and bringing the reader to a scene of domestic
+misery caused by those societies, we will conclude these remarks by
+quoting one or two verses from a parody on a very popular American
+song.  We believe the lines representing the poor little child calling
+in the middle of the night, in the cold and wet, at the Masonic lodge
+for its father, to be as truthful in the realities of domestic
+suffering as they are beautiful and touching in poetic sentiment:
+
+  "Father, dear father, stop home with us pray
+    You never stop home with us now;
+  'Tis always the 'lodge' or 'lodge business,' you say,
+    That will not home pleasures allow.
+  Poor mother says benevolence is all very well,
+    And your efforts would yield her delight,
+  If they did not take up so much of your time,
+    And keep you from home every night.
+
+  "Father, dear father, stop home with us pray!
+    Poor mother's deserted, she said,
+  And she wept o'er your absence one night, till away
+    From our home to your lodge-room I sped.
+  A man with a  red collar came out and smiled,
+    And patted my cheeks, cold and blue,
+  And I told him I was a good Templar's child,
+    And was waiting, dear father, for you.
+
+  "Father, dear father, come home with me now;
+    You left us before half-past seven.
+  Don't say you'll come soon, with a frown on your brow;
+    'Twill soon, father dear, be eleven.
+  Your supper is cold, for the fire is quite dead,
+    And mother to bed has gone, too;
+  And these were the very last words that she said;
+    'I hate those Freemasons, I do!'"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV.
+
+The Freemason's Home.
+
+
+Late on a dark night in the commencement of November, wind and rain
+blowing with violence from the mountains, and the streets of Geneva
+abandoned, we find our young heroines sitting in a comfortable room.
+They are lounging on easy-chairs before a warm fire; the eldest is
+reading, and the youngest, although dressed in the pretty uniform
+of a naval cadet, is working at embroidery with colored wools.
+
+Alvira and Aloysia, at the command of their father, have still preserved
+their disguise, at first irksome to their habits and delicacy of
+maidenhood; but necessity and fear toned down their objection, and
+they gradually accustomed themselves to the change.  In girlish
+simplicity they were pleased with the novelty of their position.  They
+knew each other as Charles and Henry, and by these names we must now
+call them.
+
+The old clock of the church on the hill sent the mournful tones of the
+eleventh hour over the silent city.  Charles counted the solemn booms
+of the church bell, and then, as if resuming the conversation with
+Henry:  "Eleven o'clock, and father not come home yet!  I am sure I
+don't know what keeps father out every night so late; if poor mother
+were alive, she would never stand this."
+
+"But perhaps pa may have important business and can't come home," we
+hear the amiable Henry suggesting.
+
+"Business!  Nothing of the kind.  He has got in amongst some old fools
+who pretend to have more knowledge than their grandfathers, and are
+deceiving old women of both sexes to such a degree that they actually
+fancy they are inspired to make new Bibles, new commandments, and new
+churches."
+
+"But father might be trying to put them right," replied Henry softly,
+"and perhaps feels as you do.  How sad to see them going astray!"
+
+"No," answered the other with greater animation, "he is as bad as any
+of them.  You remember long ago how he used to make poor mother cry
+when speaking of the great mystery of Redemption; he called it the
+greatest swindle the world ever saw.  You remember what blasphemous
+and insulting language he addressed to the Sisters of St. Vincent when
+they asked for alms in honor of the Blessed Virgin; and you know how
+he is always reading the most impious works.
+
+"He is now shut up in one of those mysterious rooms called Freemason
+lodges, where, if report be true, the enemies of the Church and state
+plot the ruin of mankind.  Henry, he is not only an infidel and a
+Freemason, but he is unkind to us."
+
+Saying these last words, Charles rose and paced up and down the room,
+as if full of passion.
+
+Faith, like anemones that flourish in the depths of the ocean when the
+surface is tossed with storm, was concealed in the heart of Charles,
+and inspired those feelings of holy indignation which live in secret
+in the heart even when passion rages in triumph without.
+
+Henry ventured a reply, but the excited manner of her sister checked
+her, and, burying her face in her hands, she remained in silence.
+Well she knew Charles was right, and in the deep sympathy of her
+innocent, loving heart her feelings crept into prayer for her erring
+parent, and silent tears suffused her eyes.
+
+Whilst the two girls were thus engaged--the one pacing the room and
+biting her lips with annoyance, the other wrapt in prayer and tears--the
+step of Cassier was heard on the stairs.
+
+It was unfortunate for Charles.  He had given loose rein to his passion,
+and it was at this moment beyond control.  The scene reminds us of a
+poor wife, the hapless victim of a drunkard's home, drawing on herself
+brutal treatment, when, in the lonely hours of midnight and in the
+pent-up feelings of a breaking heart, she would incautiously reprove
+the maddened retch who is reeling home to her under the fumes of
+intoxication; thus Charles gave vent to feelings she had long nursed
+in her bosom, and spoke in disrespectful language of reproof to her
+intoxicated father.
+
+Cassier had come from the carousals of the lodge.  The fumes of the
+old wines had reached his brain; the fearless and unexpected reproof
+of Charles startled him.  In an instant the demon of intemperance
+reigned in his heart; without waiting to answer, he approached the
+girl, gave her a severe slap on the face, and ordered her to her
+apartments.
+
+Charles and Henry retired to a sleepless couch, and their pillow was
+moistened with many bitter tears before the dawn of the morning.
+
+In a small spark commences the conflagration that destroys cities;
+the broad river that flows with irresistible majesty through our plains
+commences in a rivulet leaping and sparkling on the green hill-side;
+the almighty avalanche that sweeps with the roar of thunder through
+the Alpine ravines commences in a handful of loosened snow.  Thus to
+a thought, a guilty desire uncontrolled, may be traced the greatest
+moral catastrophes.
+
+A cloud passed over the thoughts of Charles.  From the momentous evening
+she received the rebuke of her father, her heart became the battle-field
+of contending emotions.  She brooded in silence over imaginary wrongs,
+and thus gave to a latent passion the first impulse that led to
+disastrous consequences.  Diseased fancy lent a charm to thoughts long
+forgotten, and recalled the pictures of pride and ambition that had
+so often gilded the horizon of her young hopes.  To be free and have
+wealth, she thought, was worth swimming across a river of blood to
+gain.
+
+A temptation seized the thoughts of Charles.  It clung to her like
+the bloodsucker drawing fresh streams from young veins.  Notwithstanding
+her efforts to shake off the terrible temptation, and because she did
+not seek aid in the sacraments of the Church, it lived and haunted
+her in spite of her will.  We tremble to write it--'twas to murder her
+father.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV.
+
+Tragedy in the Mountains.
+
+
+                        Come, you spirits
+  That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
+  And fill me from the crown to the toe topful
+  Of direst cruelty!  Make thick my blood;
+  Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
+  That no compunctious visitings of nature
+  Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
+  The effect and it.  Come to my woman's breasts,
+  And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
+  Wherever in your sightless substances
+  You wait on nature's mischief!  Come, thick night,
+  And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
+  That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
+  Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
+  To cry, "Hold!, hold!"
+                             --Macbeth.
+
+
+Poor Alvira!  Her morning dawned after a restless, sleepless night.
+Phantoms of terror haunted her couch.  The agonies of anticipated
+remorse had cast a withering shadow on her thoughts.  She could not
+believe her own depravity in entertaining for a moment such a thrilling
+temptation.
+
+Was it a dream?  Was it the hallucination of a spirit of evil that
+revels in the human passions?  "I, who love my father notwithstanding
+his faults, who would tremble at the gaze of my mother looking down
+from heaven on my awful impiety, and would hear from her tomb her
+scream of terror, her curse of vengeance on my parricidal guilt--could
+I be the foolish wretch that would consent to a deed of crime which
+would make me a fugitive from the face of men, and haunt my rest with
+the ghost of a murdered father?"
+
+Thus Alvira mused.  But a demon laughed at her tender conscience; deep
+in hell they had forged a terrible temptation.  They knew the walls
+of the citadel of morality, built alone on natural virtue and unaided
+by divine grace, would soon crumble before their powerful machinations.
+In moments of sober reflection our resolutions are like prisms of
+basalt, that will not be riven by the lightning, but which in the hour
+of real trial prove to be ice-crystals that a sunbeam can dissolve.
+The powers that wage war with frail humanity have hung on the portals
+of the infernal kingdom, as trophies of triumph over man and insult
+to God, the resolutions of mortals made in moments of fervor and
+broken in weakness.
+
+Days roll on; they bring their sunshine and clouds, but no change in
+the unhappy family; a change there was for the worse in the appalling
+development of the infidel and socialistic tendencies of their impious
+father.  His language, less guarded, seemed to teem with new insults
+against religion and God, and contributed to confirm the chill of
+horror with which he was met by hapless children that sighed over the
+loss of filial love.  His late returns from the lodge, and occasionally
+those sad ebullitions of intemperance, continued to be their deep
+affliction.
+
+In proportion as love twines itself around the heart it absorbs all
+other feelings, it draws the passions like lentils around itself; so
+the contrary feeling of hatred, when permitted to enter the sanctuary
+of the heart, assumes at once a tyrannical sway, whose wicked demands
+of gratification become more and more imperious and exacting day by
+day, and rears a throne that becomes impregnable in proportion as the
+sun is allowed to set on its possessions.  Even filial love has
+withered under the shadow of Cassier's worthlessness.
+
+In lonely walks along the lake, in conversations, and in tears the two
+girls lamented their fate.  The beauty of virtue withered within their
+bosoms.  The resembled two beautiful flowers torn from their bed, and
+cast with the weeds of the garden to taint in their decay the breezes
+they would sweeten if left on their stem.  They longed for the pleasures
+that pleased in the day of prosperity; the dance, the banquet, and
+those visits that won the momentary gratification of flattery and
+admiration were sighed for.  So irksome was the monotony and so
+uncongenial the role forced upon them by disguise, they hailed with
+joy the least circumstance that might be the harbinger of a change.
+
+It is at hand.  Once more the excitement of chase!  The vigilance of
+their astute father has placed them again in the caleche, and spirited
+horses are galloping from the Swiss capital.
+
+News from Paris has arrived; the failure, the flight, the reward, are
+passed around in a sensational romance, and the disappearance of two
+police officers lends the charms of mystery to the embellished rumor.
+Cassier--the hero of the tale, the unsuspected guilty one--went around
+and told the news with all the sanctimonious whining and eye-uplifting
+of a ranting preacher.  In the meantime he matured his plans, and
+before suspicion could point her finger at him he fled to another
+retreat to elude for a while the justice of man to meet his awful
+doom from the hands of God.
+
+During the night Cassier and his children ascend the terrific pass of
+the Tete Noir; he proposes to hide from the threatened storm in the
+cloister of Martigny.  This is a venerable Benedictine monastery,
+erected in the eleventh century by a Catholic prince, under the
+sanction of Urban II., possessing, besides many other privileges,
+that of sanctuary for fugitive prisoners.
+
+The dangers of the road and the fear of pursuit lent additional terror
+to the wild mountain scenery; at one moment they are dizzy looking
+into awful chasms formed by huge perpendicular rocks; then the
+overhanging cliffs would seem every moment to break from their frail
+support and rush down the steep mountain in an avalanche of stone.
+In cold that penetrated to the very bones, amidst the roar of torrents
+leaping through caverns of ice, and in dangers unseen and therefore
+more dreadful, they passed a restless journey through the mountains,
+and arrived at the charming village of Martigny, over which the
+monastery presided like the fortress of a mediaeval castle protecting
+the feudal territory of the petty ruler.  Wearied, but pleased at the
+novel situation into which chance had cast them, Charles and Henry
+approached the venerable pile with feelings of reverence they had
+never felt.  The silence of the tomb reigned around, and the old gate
+was closed.  Whilst wondering how men could come voluntarily to live
+in such a solitude, and how they got the necessaries of life, a bell
+tolled solemnly from one of the towers; its soft, mellow tones rolled
+in sweet echoes across the mountains.  Immediately the place became
+thronged with men in the habit of the Benedictine Order, hastening to
+and fro to commence their daily work.  An aged porter bowed the
+strangers into a neat apartment, and summoned the Superior.  No
+questions were asked, but comfortable rooms were appointed to them,
+and they were conducted in silence to the refectory, where a plain
+but substantial meal was placed before them.  Thus commenced a visit
+the most extraordinary in the records of this venerable mountain
+cloister.
+
+Charles and Henry were charmed with everything, although they found
+themselves in strange contrast with desires of worldly pleasure they
+had recently entertained.  The wild, rugged scenery, the solemn silence
+of the house, and the sanctity of the mortified monks made a deep and
+solemn impression on the tender hearts of the young visitors, who
+felt the delicacy of their position in enjoying a forbidden hospitality.
+The example of the evangelical perfection practised by these holy
+servants of God insensibly drew Charles and Henry to love the sublime
+virtues they practised.  Nothing impressed them more than the solemn
+chant of the Office at midnight.  The slow, solemn enunciation of
+each word by a choir of hoary anchorets rolled in majestic cadence
+through the precipices of the mountains, and died away in the distant
+ravines in echoes of heavenly harmony.
+
+An aged father was appointed to entertain the strangers.  He led them
+to points on the mountain where the view was most enchanting; skilled
+in ancient monastic lore, he entertained them with anecdotes and
+histories from which he drew the most instructive morals.  One cheerful
+afternoon, when seated on the rocks viewing a magnificent sunset, the
+aged monk told them his own history.  He had been a soldier of fortune.
+In youth his ambition was as boundless as the horizon; he worshipped
+his sword and loved the terrors of battle.  Fortune smiled on his
+hopes, and he moved on from grade to grade, until he became commander
+of a division.
+
+He was present at the fatal field of Salzbach, where the great General
+Turenne fell in the commencement of the battle.  The aged warrior,
+forgetting the gravity of his years and his habit, would speak in the
+fire of other days, suiting his action to the word.
+
+He told his listeners the touching tale of his conversion.  The death
+of the beloved Turenne, and at the same time the demise of his mother,
+made him enter seriously into self, repeating the farewell words of
+a celebrated courtier who left the French court to don the habit:
+"Some time of preparation should pass between the life of a solider
+and his grave."  He heard the great St. Vincent de Paul preaching on
+the vanities of life; his resolutions were confirmed, and tears
+started to his eyes as he recounted how happy he was in his home in
+the cliffs and the clouds.
+
+Charles loved to hear the aged man's reminiscences of his military
+career.  Fired with chivalrous aspirations, she could spend a lifetime
+in the regions of fancy so fervidly depicted from their Alpine retreat.
+Poor Aloysia was attracted to the higher and more real glories of
+the virtuous lives of these holy men.  She felt she could stay with
+them for ever; and there, in the secrecy of her own heart, and before
+the alter of our Holy Mother, she made promises that shared in the
+merits of vows.  When free, she would give herself to the love of God
+and the preparation for eternity in some secluded retreat of religion
+and virginity.
+
+But the nearer the alter, the further from God.  Reverse the picture,
+and another must be contemplated.  Is it the venerable cloister buried
+in the snow, buffeted by the storm, and threatened by the avalanche?
+is it the awful death of starvation hanging in all its gloomy
+anticipations over the community isolated by the snow-storm from the
+civilized world around?  Or will it be the just indignation of the
+holy monks in finding the true character of the refugees whom they
+have sheltered in ignorance, contrary to the canons of the Church?
+Or will the still more devastating and ruthless storm of religious
+persecution seek the sanctuary in the clouds to desecrate it, to
+scatter its inmates and wreck its cloisters?
+
+A calamity as thrilling and not less anticipated will fling a sad
+memory around the venerable cloisters of Martigny.
+
+Cassier is in the group listening to the aged monk recount his
+adventures; with knitted eyebrows he hears him moralizing on the awful
+destiny of the future.  He is a silent listener; the conversation
+is carried on by the garrulous and interested youths and the happy,
+virtuous old monk.  A forced sobriety, or the atmosphere of virtue
+which he dreads, has cast a gloom over him.  His thoughts are still
+reeking with the blasphemy of the Masonic lodges, and, though restrained
+by politeness from intruding his unbelief, he expresses in scowls
+and monosyllables his dissentient feelings.
+
+Charles still burns with indignation at her father's irreligion and
+personal ill-treatment.  Her flushed countenance and agitated manner
+were at times indexes of passion, revenge, and self-love; for a moment
+the feeling is strong and irresistible, then calms again with the
+holier sentiments of remorse and self-condemnation.
+
+A morning as brilliant as ever lit up the glaciers of Mt. Blank rose
+over the cloisters.  Charles and Henry accompany their father on a
+stroll through the mountain.  They miss their kind Mentor, who is
+on a retreat for some days.  Henry, commencing to love solitude, strays
+from her father and Charles to gather ferns and wild flowers creeping
+from the crevices of the rocks, or rising with exquisite beauty from
+a layer of snow.  They are emblems of her own innocence and fragrant
+as her virtue, growing in the wilderness and shedding their charms
+on rocks and snow-peaks, instead of ornamenting gardens of culture
+and beauty.  Poor Aloysia would be more at home in some arbor of
+innocence where angels love to tarry, and where the voice and gaze of
+the worldly-minded have never fallen.
+
+Cassier and Charles had slowly climbed to a projecting rock where
+nature had made a large table covered with grass.  On one side the
+ascent was easy, but the other overhung a frightful precipice.  They
+had entered into an animated conversation; Aloysia, down beneath,
+could hear the sharp, quick answers of Charles, but, as such was usual
+in the temper of Charles, she did not notice it.
+
+But lo! another moment, and a wild, shrill scream bade her look up;
+her father was no longer on the ledge of rock, and Charles flung her
+arms towards heaven and fell in a swoon on the edge of the precipice.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI.
+
+A Funeral in the Snow.
+
+
+When Charles had recovered her consciousness, she found herself
+reclining on the lap of Henry, who had been bathing her face with snow
+and tears.  A long, painful call of her name had reached the inmost
+recess of her being whither consciousness had repaired.  Springing
+to her feet, startled as if from a frightful dream, she gazed around.
+Memory and sight returned; folding her face in her hands, she cried
+in a paroxysm of grief:  "My God! what have I done?"
+
+This was the only intimation she ever gave Aloysia that in the heat
+of passion she had pushed her father over the precipice; she was his
+murderer.  In their conversation the old man, more, perhaps, through
+impiety than conviction, misrepresented the good monks.  We will not
+reproduce the stereotyped calumnies that even nowadays unbelievers love
+to heap upon the religious communities of the Catholic Church.  The
+madness of passion took control in the breast of Charles.  Scarcely
+knowing what she did, she pushed her aged father towards the precipice;
+he slipped, fell over into the chasm, and passed into eternity with
+blasphemy on his guilty lips.
+
+The two sisters wept together for hours.  Innocence, guilt, and
+retribution blended together in a scene of awful tragedy amid the
+glaciers of Mt. Blanc.
+
+Seldom in the deeds of brigandage, in crimes committed in dark caves
+and lonely mountain paths, was there perpetrated a fouler murder;
+seldom in the sensational records of human depravity do we find the
+desperado of parricidal guilt under the delicate frame of girlhood.
+Yet was she rather an instrument in the hands of avenging Heaven
+than a monster of moral iniquity.  At that moment the cup of iniquity
+was full for the wretch who had long tested the mercy of God.  That
+Providence which blinded the Jews in judgement for ingratitude, and
+made them the instruments for the fulfilment of eternal decrees of
+redemption, withdrew from Alvira the protection that made her, whilst
+she accepted the guilt, the instrument of judgment.
+
+Rising to her feet with a sense of her desperate condition, making a
+few hurried explanations how her father slipped and lost his balance,
+she approached tremblingly the fatal edge.  Leaning over, she saw the
+corpse of her father lying in a pool of blood in the deep chasm below.
+The scene of that sad moment was indelibly impressed on her memory,
+and in after-hours of remorse haunted her with its horrors.
+
+With nerve and courage, called forth by the awful circumstances of
+the moment, they descended the mountain to the foot of the ravine
+where the body lay in the snow.
+
+The descent was steep and treacherous, and guilty conscience made
+Charles tremble lest at any moment she would lose footing and be
+precipitated down the dark and gaping chasms formed by glaciers and
+rocks.  After hours of toil, and with imminent peril, they found the
+body of Cassier.  A dark pallor had clouded his features, a ghastly
+stare, closed teeth, and  clenched hand bespoke the last sentiment
+of human passion.  Alvira trembled and stood powerless for a few
+moments.  Still, necessity nerved her to action.  She removed the
+money and valuables from the body of her father, and, in the midst
+of wailings that echoed mournfully through the lonely mountain, they
+made a grave in the snow.  Wrapping him in his cloak, they laid him
+in a bank of soft crystals through which the blood had trickled in
+crimson streams.
+
+Thrilling and sad for Aloysia and Alvira the last moments of this
+funeral ceremony.  Gently they placed the cold snow on the remains of
+their father.  The wild eagle swooped around in anger, and the wind
+swept with ominous sighs through deep ravines of the rugged mountain.
+The gigantic cliff over which Cassier had been hurled by his maddened
+child frowned over them in awful majesty.  It would be in centuries
+to come the cenotaph of a dishonored tomb.  The winter would come again
+with fresh snow to cover this valley of death; the sun would pour its
+cold rays on the frozen mound that marked the grave of Cassier.  No
+tear of affection would  moisten the icy shroud, but, in sympathy for
+the hapless child stained with his blood, whose crime was condoned in
+the provocation caused, the world has cast its abhorrent curse on the
+grave of the reprobate.
+
+   "There let every noxious thing
+    Trail its filth and fix its sting;
+    In his ears and eyeballs tingling,
+    With his blood their poison mingling,
+    Till beneath the solar fires.
+    Rankling all, the curse expires."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII.
+
+An Unwritten Page.
+
+
+  The noise of life can ne'er so dull our ear,
+    Nor passion's waves, though in their wildest mood,
+  That oft above their surge we should not hear
+    The solemn voices of the great and good.
+
+  As oft in icicles a flower remaineth
+    Unwithered until spring its buds unchain,
+  The young heart through lifes change a good retaineth,
+    And will exhume its summer leaves again.
+
+
+When Charles and Henry had breathed their last sigh over the snowy
+mound that covered the earthly remains of the hapless Cassier, they
+continued their descent down the mountain.  They dared not go back
+to the cloister; they fled when no one pursued, for outraged
+conscience is its own avenger.  Each stir in the brushwood, a loosened
+stone rolling quickly by, or the fluttering and scream of startled
+birds of the solitude, made them tremble.
+
+Night was fast coming on; the sharp peaks of the Tete Noir were dimmed
+with clouds, and frowned with ominous terror on the path of the
+terrified fugitives.  Through dangers of every kind, with bruises and
+wounds all over their delicate frames, they reached in the night the
+beautiful village of Chamounix.  Refreshed with sleep and food, they
+prepared themselves for their future course, which for a while will
+be perilous, sensational, and extraordinary.
+
+Free from the control of an intemperate and tyrannical father,
+possessing immense wealth, they cast themselves into a whirlpool of
+deceitful pleasure, and for a while, in yielding to the longings of
+misguided youth, hushed the qualms of conscience, which can only rest
+in the bosom of virtue.
+
+Once more free, the thought naturally came of returning to the dress
+that became their sex.  Aloysia, whose sense of delicacy was still as
+tender as the sensitive plant yielding to human touch, pleaded in
+tears for a return to the simple ways of girlhood, to the life and
+society more congenial to their habits and more in keeping with the
+laws of God and nature.  Alvira had yielded for a moment.  But the love
+of travel, which in those days could not be gratified in their true
+condition of young and handsome girls without guardians, whilst in
+their male disguise not a shadow of suspicion or impropriety would
+interfere with them; the novelty of their condition, assuming each
+day some new attractions; the curiosity innate in the feminine breast
+to hear and see things outside her own circle; above all the
+hallucinations flung on the path of disguise by the fiend of evil,
+who thus intrigued for the final ruin of his unsuspecting victims,
+made them agree mutually to pass a short time in travelling around as
+naval cadets; then, tired and surfeited with their triumph over nature,
+they hoped to retire into the sphere of utility destined for them by
+Providence.
+
+But, to our own and to our readers' regret, we must pause in our
+biography.  The sources from which we cull these interesting details
+have cast historic silence over our heroines' ramblings of three years.
+What a volume of sensation they suggest!  Were we given to the doubtful
+utility of fictional biography, were we weak enough to enrich ourselves
+by pandering to the morbid and often depraved longings of modern
+literary taste, we might fill a couple of volumes with scenes of
+excitement, of "hair-breadth 'scapes," and with heart-palpitating
+suspenses of misplaced love.  We could not draw a picture more
+interesting or strange than those two sweet maidens in their disguise.
+We see them in the salons of the wealthy, in the clubs of the
+politicians, and at the billiard-tables of giddy youth who little dream
+of the intrusion, which, if they understood, would make them more happy.
+We fancy we see those youths, so polished, so gay, and withal so
+handsome, the idols of the society they move in; we hear compliments
+about those delicate hands, those small feet, those charming eyes.
+Our sympathy would chronicle the end fate of many an unsuspecting
+maiden who loved and pined in the dream of secret love towards the
+young officers that had crossed their path, whilst they revelled in
+cruel delight in their triumph over their own frail, tender-hearted
+sex.  Our tale might unravel the plottings of hopeful mothers who
+vainly plied the utmost worldly ingenuity to gain for their daughters
+already passed the meridian of youth such promising and charming
+husbands.  What skill it would demand to describe the chagrin of those
+old and young ladies, if they discovered the fraud which so heartlessly
+trifled with the sacred feeling of love!
+
+We will not tarry over imaginary incidents whilst terrible and
+thrilling scenes are before us.  The record of those extraordinary
+maidens is only now commending in all its romantic attraction.  It is
+not the vicissitudes of an erring life that inspire our pen in this
+brief sketch, but the merciful designs of Providence in following and
+wresting from perdition a noble soul, endeared to heaven by the
+prayers of a repentant mother, by the sighs of a saintly religious,
+and by its own love for the immaculate Queen of Heaven.
+
+Alvira opens her soul to the impulses of grace, but in dangerous and
+guilty procrastination she passes through some startling vicissitudes
+before the Almighty, impatient as it were for her love, draws her to
+him by one of the most touching miracles recorded in the wonders of
+hagiology.  We will hurry on to those events, which will warm our
+hearts with love towards God, and make us look up with a deep feeling
+of awe towards that "mercy which is above all his works."
+
+Three years of strange vicissitude rolled over the career of our
+heroines.  Some thousands of pounds gilded the path they passed over.
+With all the recklessness of youth, they squandered their ill-gotten
+money.  Many a poor ruined family eked out a miserable existence,
+whilst their gold, entrusted to the wretched banker who had gone to
+his account, was flung recklessly on the tables of chance by the
+children he had nursed in the school of iniquity.  Like sand passing
+through the fingers, like corn through perforated sack, their thousands
+dwindled away, giving place to the bitter hour of retaliation, of
+punishment, which will yet come for those hapless children of folly.
+
+It did not please Almighty God to hurry them to a dreadful judgement
+by sudden or awful death.  He has other and even keener pangs than
+those of death, but they come rather from the hand of mercy than of
+justice.  They are the pangs of remorse, which tear the heart of their
+victims with agonizing stings that are known only in the deep secrets
+of the soul.  A dark and secret hour of retribution is at hand for
+Charles; the heavy but merciful hand of God will touch her, although
+she will still follow the mad career of her hypocrisy and the wild
+dreams of her ambition.
+
+Alvira, still in her disguise of Charles, endeavored to forget the
+crimes she committed in the dissipation in which she indulged.  Whilst
+wealth and friends were around she feigned a gay heart and flattered
+herself she was not so bad.  She involuntarily blushed at rude remarks
+made by gentlemen amongst whom she passed as a companion, and in the
+unsullied innocence of her sister she found a guardian for herself.
+They invariably shunned low society, and thus they won the esteem of
+all; they passed as young men of virtue as well as of beauty and of
+grace.  The immorality that dishonored the manhood around them, the
+indecency of the conversations they heard, and the open and blasphemous
+impiety that often thrilled their dove-like hearts, made them form
+a pleasing contrast with themselves and the corrupted society they
+had now known to the core; yet, "Say not I have sinned, and what
+evil hath befallen me."  Who can flee from the eye of God?  There's a
+sting in the conviction of guilt that will follow its victim through
+the ballroom, the mountain cave, or the cloister, to the very side
+of the bed of death.
+
+It was when Charles and Henry found their money nearly gone, and the
+prospect of poverty before them, they felt in all its painful
+anticipations the prospect of a gloomy and unknown future.  There is
+no pang, perhaps, in nature so keen as that which pierces the rich
+and ambitious when certain poverty stares them in the face; perhaps
+'tis shame, perhaps 'tis pride, perhaps 'tis the despair that arises
+from the shock of blasted hopes--or all together--that weight on the
+sinking heart, and make each vital throb like the last heavy thud of
+death.  Then suicide has a charm and self-destruction a temptation.
+Many a turbulent wave has closed the career of a the beggared
+spendthrift and the thwarted man of ambition.
+
+Charles commenced now to suffer in anticipation all the pangs of coming
+shame, poverty, and humiliation.  With remorse returned the virtuous
+impressions of childhood, instilled into her tender mind by her
+penitent mother.  She longed to return to the circle nature had
+destined for her, but which seemed more difficult now than to commence
+a new disguise.  Although she yielded in all virtuous impulses to that
+"procrastination which is the thief of time," yet in her after-career
+there was a wonderful combination of events, extraordinary and
+interesting, which prove a loving and forgiving Providence hearing the
+prayer of a penitent mother.  But we must raise the curtain and proceed
+with the drama of sacred romance whose first cats have given so much
+interest and sympathy.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII.
+
+In Uniform.
+
+
+It was a bright morning in November, in the year 1684.  The people of
+Milan were all flocking to the cathedral.  It was the feast of the
+great St. Charles.  The magnificent Duomo which now covers the shrine
+of this great saint was not in existence then; nevertheless, the
+devotion of the people towards their apostle and patron was deep and
+sincere.  Perhaps in no city in Italy is there greater pomp thrown
+around the patron's festival than at Milan.  From morning to night
+thousands gather around that venerated shrine.  The prince with his
+liveried servants, and the poor peasant with the snow-white handkerchief
+tied on her head, kneel there side by side.  From the first anniversary
+of the great saint's death to the present day the musical services of
+the great cathedral have been rendered by the greatest talent in Italy,
+Professionals and amateurs flocked from every side to do honor to
+the man who did so much honor to the city of Milan.  Nowadays, since
+science has shortened distance, it is one of the autumnal amusements
+of the wealthy Englishman to be present at the Feast of St. Charles
+at Milan.  The gorgeous Duomo, hewn, as it were, out of Carrara
+marble, covered with five thousand statues and pinnacles, illumined
+with hundreds of thousands of lights swinging in the lofty aisles in
+chandeliers of sparkling crystal; the majestic organs, accompanied
+in musical harmony by hundreds of the best of human voices, rolling
+in soul-stirring majesty over the heads of tens of thousands of the
+kneeling children of the saint--all leave an impression never to be
+forgotten.  Although in modern days the city of Milan has nurtured in
+her bosom some of the firebrands of Italian revolution, yet the city
+honored with the names and relics of Ambrose, Augustine, and Charles
+has yet thousands of pious and holy souls, who still gather with filial
+devotion around the tombs of the sainted dead.
+
+On the morning of the festival of St. Charles our heroine awoke with
+a heavy heart.  She knew the city was astir and repairing to the
+cathedral.  How strange she should have chosen the name of Charles!
+How great, how holy everything connected with that name!  Could the
+man of God who made it so venerable to his people meet the wretch who
+had assumed it to dishonor it?  Could even the pious people who flocked
+to the cathedral know there was amongst them a Charles whose hands were
+stained with parricidal guilt?  Like the wicked man who fleeth when
+no man pursueth, Charles trembled lest the indignation of the people,
+of the saint, and of God should crush her in punishment of her sins.
+
+With thoughts like these she entered the cathedral.  Henry was by her
+side.  The Pontifical High Mass had commenced, and the organ rolled
+its majestic tones through the aisles of the old church.  Immense
+crowds had already gathered around the tomb, and Charles and Henry
+repaired to a quiet and obscure portion of the building, where they
+could observe without being observed.
+
+Some years had now passed since Charles had breathed a prayer.  There
+was something in everything around her that softened her heart; she
+buried her face in her hands and wept.  An eloquent panegyric was
+preached by a Dominican Father.  The peroration was an appeal to the
+assembled thousands to kneel and implore the blessing of the saint
+on the city and on themselves.  Few sent a more fervent appeal than
+the poor, sinful girls who shunned the gaze of the crowd.  The prayer
+of Charles was heard, and God, who works wonders in the least of his
+works, brought about the conversion of this child of predestination
+in a manner as strange as it is interesting.
+
+The crowd have left the cathedral.  The lights are extinguished.  The
+service is over.  Charles and Henry are amongst the last to leave.
+On coming into the great square before the church they were surprised
+to see large groups of men in deep conversation.  Their excited and
+animated manner showed at once something strange had happened.  Men
+of strange dress appeared also in the crowd.  Charles enquired what
+was the matter, and was informed that word had just come that
+Charles II. of Spain had declared war with Naples, and, as the state
+of Milan was subsidiary to the kingdom of the latter, he had sent
+officers to cause an enrolment of troops.  Large inducements were
+offered to all who would join, and numbers of the youth of the city
+had already given their names.
+
+Charles scarcely hesitated in coming to a conclusion.  The reduced
+state of their circumstances, the perfection of her disguise, and
+the still unconquered ambition of her heart made the circumstance
+a change of golden hope in the sinking prospects of her career.  One
+thought alone deterred her.  Could the delicate frame and soul of
+her little sister bear the hardships of a soldier's life?  She breathed
+her thoughts to Henry.  The latter cried and trembled.  The one and
+only scene of blood she had witnessed still haunted her soul with
+horror--'twas in the ravine near Chamounix.  But Charles still urged
+on the necessity of some desperate movement, and persuaded her, if
+they succeeded in joining this new service as officers, their position
+would be much the same as that they had passed through during the last
+two years.  Poor Henry had but one tie to live for in the world; she
+preferred death to separation from her sister, and in the bravery of
+sisterly affection, she told Charles she would swim by her side in
+the river of blood she might cause to flow.
+
+The next morning found them enrolled as officers in the army of the
+King of Naples.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX.
+
+Remorse.
+
+
+  They call'd her cold and proud,
+    Because her lip and brow
+  Amid the mirthful crowd
+    No kindred mirth avowed;
+  Alas! nor look nor language e'er reveal
+  How much the sad can love, the lonely feel.
+
+  The peopled earth appears
+    A dreary desert wide;
+  Her gloominess and tears
+    The stern and gay deride.
+  O God! life's heartless mockeries who can bear
+  When grief is dumb and deep thought brings despair?
+
+
+During the terrible storm that passed over the Church at the
+commencement of the third century, we have a thrilling incident which
+shows the terror and remorse of the pagan emperors when they returned
+to their golden house after witnessing the execution of their martyred
+victims.
+
+Diocletian, being enraged with Adrian, the governor of Aninoe--who,
+from being an ardent persecutor of the Church, had become a fervent
+follower of Christ--caused him to be dragged to Nicomedia, where,
+seized with implacable rage a the sight of the constancy of the martyr,
+who had once been his friend and confidant, he ordered him to be thrown
+chained hand and foot, at the decline of day, into a deep pit, which
+was filled with earth and stones before the emperor's eyes.  When
+the last cry of the victim had been stifled under the accumulated earth,
+the emperor stamped on it with his feet and cried out in a tone of
+defiance: "Now, Adrian, if thy Christ loves thee, let him show it."
+
+He then quitted the field of punishment, but felt himself so overpowered
+by such an extraordinary feeling that he knew not whether it was the
+termination of his passion or the commencement of his remorse.  His
+Thessalian courtiers bore him rapidly away from the accursed spot.
+Night fell; Diocletian, agitated and restless, prepared to retire to
+rest, for his head was burning.  He entered his chamber, which was
+hung around with purple, but the walls of which now seemed to distil
+blood.  He advanced a few steps, when, lo! a corpse appeared to rise
+slowly on his golden couch; his bed was occupied by a spectre, and
+near the costly lamp, which shed a pale light round the chamber, the
+chains of the martyr seemed to descend from the ceiling.  Diocletian
+uttered a cry that might have penetrated the grave.  His guards ran
+in, but instantly grew pale, drew back, and, pointing to the object
+which caused an icy sweat to cover the imperial brow, they said with
+horror to each other: "It is the Christian."
+
+Thus a guilty conscience summons imaginary terrors around it.  Cain
+fled when no one pursued.  Nero heard invisible trumpets ringing his
+death-knell around the tomb of his mother.  How often has the mountain
+bandit, whose hand trembled not at murder, shuddered with fear, as
+he hastened through the forest, at the sound of a branch waving in
+the wind, or felt his hair stand erect with terror on beholding a
+distant bush fantastically enlightened by the moon!  Conscience has
+made cowards of the most sanguinary freebooters and the most shameless
+oppressors.  The dreadful "worm that dieth not," and banishes every
+cheerful thought from the guilty soul, is not inaptly compared to the
+wretch we read of in the annals of Eastern crime, condemned to carry
+about with him the dead and decomposing body of his murdered victim.
+
+It is not to be expected that Charles escaped the agonies of a guilty
+conscience.  From the moment she left the church in Milan the usual
+and dreadful struggle between shame and grace, humility and pride,
+commenced in her heart.  Although now and then forgotten in the
+excitement of the extraordinary disguise she had assumed, nevertheless
+the feeling of remorse dampened every pleasure, and added to the
+disguise of her person another disguise of false joy to her countenance.
+This reaction caused an important feature in the life of Alvira during
+her stay in the beautiful town of Messina, whither we must ask our
+reader to follow our heroines to commence in their military career
+the most interesting part of his historical romance.
+
+The Milanese recruits were busily engaged in going through military
+instruction, when orders were received that the division should
+sail immediately for Messina.  There are few acquainted with the
+military life who do not know how disagreeable are orders to move.
+The bustle, the packing, the breaking up of associations, and the
+inevitable want of comfort in the military march try the courage of
+the brave man more than the din of battle, and robs the military
+career of much of its boasted enthusiasm.  The stalwart son of Mars,
+who forgets there are such things as danger and fatigue in the exciting
+hour of battle, will grumble his discontent at the inconveniences of
+the hour of peace.  We will leave it to the imagination of the reader
+to conceive the feelings, the regrets and misgivings, of our young
+heroines as their little vessel set sail from the town of Spezzia for
+the fortress of Messina.  Although their biographers say nothing of
+their voyage, we cannot but imagine it was an unpleasant one.
+Although the blue headlands of the Italian coast, and the snow-capped
+Apennines in the distance, supplied the place of the compass, and their
+calls at the different ports deprived their journey of the painful
+monotony of a long sea-voyage, yet the associations, the cloud that
+hung over their thoughts, embittered every source of pleasure.
+
+Arrived at Messina, Charles and Henry were quartered in the old
+fortress.  It was an antiquated, quadrangular edifice, perched high
+up on the side of the hill, looking down on beautiful white houses
+built one over the other, and descending in terraces to the sea.
+Its old walls were dilapidated and discovered by the touch of time,
+and threatened every minute, as it afterwards did in the earthquake
+of 1769, to commence the awful avalanche of destruction that swept
+this fair city into the sea.
+
+The first glimpse of their barracks did not rouse in Henry any
+ejaculations of gladness.  The old Castello, as the people called it,
+ill-agreed with the noble edifices she was wont to call castles in
+her earlier days--no lofty battlements crested with clouds; no
+drawbridges swung on ponderous chains;  no mysterious keeps haunted
+with traditionary horrors; no myriads of archers in gold and blue to
+rend the heavens with a mighty shout of welcome.  Alvira's dream of
+military glory was a veritable castle in the air in the presence of
+the ruinous, ill-kept, and dilapidated fortress they had come to
+reinforce.
+
+Everything around seemed to increase the gloom that hung over Charles's
+heart.  The ill-clad and poverty-stricken people, squatting in idleness
+and dirt in the streets; the miserable shops; the doce far niente so
+conspicuously characteristic of Italian towns, were contrasted with
+the beautiful and busy capitals Charles and Henry had come from.  But
+nowhere was this contrast so keen as in their domestic arrangements.
+The bleak apartments, the campbed, the iron washstand, and the rough
+cuisine contrasted sadly with the magnificence of their father's
+splendid mansion in Paris.  No wonder our young heroines wept when
+alone over the memories of the past.
+
+Charles and Henry kept together; they avoided all society; they loved
+to ramble along the beautiful beach that ran for some miles on the
+north side of the town, and there, in floods of tears, seek relief
+for their broken hearts.  Oh! how memory will on these occasions
+wake up the happy past lost and gone, and the wicked past yet to be
+atoned for.  What heart weighted with the agony of remorse will not
+feel the sting of guilt more keen in the rememberance of the blissful
+days of innocence and childhood?  Many a blue wave has wrapt in its
+icy shroud the child of misfortune who was unable to bear the shame
+and reproof of her own conscience.  It was in the recollection of
+virtuous childhood that Charles and Henry felt their greatest sorrows.
+Every tender admonition of their dying mother; the instruction of the
+aged abbe who prepared them for their first confession and communion;
+and the piety and noble example of their little brother, Louis Marie,
+who had fled in his childhood from the world they now hated, were
+subjects often brought up in their lonely rambles.
+
+At night Charles would often awake with frightful dreams.  The cold,
+bloodstained face of her murdered father would come in awful proximity
+to her.  Her screams would bring her fellow-officers to her assistance,
+but they knew not the cause of her terror.  The young officers had
+the sympathy of the whole garrison; even the people who saw them
+return from their evening walk remarked them to be lonely and sad,
+and their eyes often red from crying.
+
+Three long and miserable months were thus passed by our heroines at
+Messina.  They were now as skilful in their military exercises as
+they were in their disguise.  But wearied of the military life, and
+longing to return to the society of their sex, they had determined
+to leave, to declare who they were, and endeavor, by some means, to
+get back to France.  Whilst deliberating on this movement an incident
+occurred which changed their plans and cast them again into an
+extraordinary circle of vicissitudes.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX.
+
+Naples.
+
+
+Whilst Charles and Henry were one evening walking along the beautiful
+beach they saw a ship nearing the land.  A strong breeze was blowing
+at the time, and whilst they paused to admire the noble bark, all
+sails set, ploughing the crested billows, and floating over them like
+an enormous sea-gull, she came nearer and nearer to the young officers.
+Another minute the sails were lowered and anchor was cast.  A small
+boat was dispatched from the ship, and made for the beach just where
+Charles and Henry were standing.  They formed a thousand conjectures
+of the meaning of this movement.  When the boat came near the land,
+a tall young man, dressed in the uniform of the Neapolitan service,
+leaped on shore and advanced towards the young officers.
+
+A few words of recognition passed.  He was a lieutenant in the
+Neopolitan army, sent with despatches for the commandant of the garrison
+of Messina to send two or three companies of the newly-enrolled troops
+to the capital.
+
+On the way to the garrison he informed Charles and Henry that the war
+was nearly at an end, but there was a great deal of disturbance and
+sedition in the city of Naples, and that the garrison there had to be
+doubled.  The object in anchoring the ship on the coast was for fear
+the garrison of Messina might have been surprised and taken by the
+Carlists.  Having assured himself all was safe, he entered the citadel
+with the young officers, and was presented to the captain, to whom he
+handed his despatches from headquarters.
+
+The next evening found Henry and Charles, with two hundred men, on
+board the ship that had anchored on the coast the day before.  The
+The excitement and bustle of departure had silenced for a while all
+feelings of remorse, and the old passions that reigned in the soul of
+Charles rose again from their dormant state.  Her eye flashed with
+life and her lips quivered with joy; there was still within her grasp
+the chance of fame.  Ambition fanned the dying embers of decaying
+hope, and every pious resolve was thrown aside until the course of
+events would realize or blast her new dream of greatness.
+
+A few days brought them in sight of the beautiful capital of the
+south of Italy.  The modern aphorism, "See Naples and then die," was
+said in other words in old times, when the Caesars and Senators of
+the empire enriched its beautiful shores with superb villas.  There
+is not in Europe a bluer sky and, true in its refection of the azure
+firmament, a bluer sea than around Naples.  The coast undulates to
+the sea in verdant slopes, which in autumn have a rich golden hue
+from the yellow tinge of the vine-leaf.  Its classic fame casts a halo
+around its charms; its history in the far past, its terrible mountain
+and periodical convulsions from the burning womb of the earth, render
+it an object of attraction to all classes.
+
+Charles and Henry were quite alive to the impressions felt by tourists
+when, whirled along by the panting steam-horse through the luxuriant
+Campo Flice, they see for the first time the column of murky smoke
+that rises to the clouds over the terrible Vesuvius.  The old mountain
+was then, as it is now, the terror and the attraction of tourists.
+The catastrophes it has caused, the cities it has swallowed up in molten
+ashes, the thunder of its roar when roused from its sleep, and the
+unhealthy, sulphurous vapors ever vomited from its cone, render it a
+veritable giant that the human race loves to see at a distance.
+
+Our heroines were already acquainted with the "Light-house of the
+Mediterranean," and from afar the lofty and ever-blazing, active Etna;
+hence Vesuvius was not so attractive as a volcano as in the halo of
+classic lore that hung around it.  At a distance the mountain seems
+to be harmless, the blue outline of the lofty cone terminating in a
+dense bank of smoke, like stormclouds gathering around the snowy peaks
+of the distant Apennines; but when the adventurous tourist wishes to
+approach nearer to its blazing crater, and toils up its torn and
+blackened sides, he will see in the immense chasms and rents traces
+of might convulsions.  Deep rivers of molten lava that take twenty
+and thirty years to cool; the quantity of ashes and cinders that could
+change the whole face of a country and bury five cities in a few hours,
+must tell of the enormous furnace raging in the bowels of the earth,
+of which Vesuvius is but its chimney.
+
+Strange, Charles longed to see Vesuvius when but a tender girl in Paris.
+She little thought the extraordinary course of human events would
+bring her, not only under the shadow of the terrible mountain itself,
+but send her through a most thrilling scene on its barren slopes.
+Let us hasten on to the course of events that rendered the extraordinary
+life of this girl so romantic.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI.
+
+Engagement with Brigands.
+
+
+Arrived in Naples, our heroines were quartered in the Molo.  This is
+an old fortress still used as a barrack in Naples.  Its massive,
+quadrangular walls were erected in the middle ages, and have withstood
+many a desperate siege in the civil wars of Italy.
+
+The detachment from the Messina garrison found the city in a state of
+disturbance and confusion.  Armed troops paraded the streets, houses
+were burning on every side, and bands of revolutionists were running
+frantically to and fro through the streets, yelling in the most
+unearthly tones their whoops of political antagonism to the Government;
+yet it was evident the Government had the upper hand, and the mob
+was gradually dispersing; they fled from the city, and order was
+restored.  In the meantime word was received in Naples that a large
+body of these ruffians had settled themselves on the sides of Vesuvius,
+and supported themselves by the wholesale plunder and pillage of the
+farms and villages on the slopes of the hill.  An order was immediately
+given that two hundred men should march to the mountain to destroy
+this band of brigands.  The company selected was that belonging to
+Charles and Henry.
+
+The next day found our young heroines on the road to the field of
+battle.  We can fancy the position and thoughts of those tender,
+delicate girls, marching side by side with the rough, bearded soldiers
+of Italy--the one rejoicing in the wild dream of her foolish ambition;
+the other trembling in her timid heart, and dragged into scenes she
+loathed by the irresistible chain of affection which bound her to her
+sister.
+
+No wonder the tender frame of girlhood yielded to the severity of the
+march--for amongst those who were first to fail was the amiable Henry;
+yet there were amongst the troops men whose constitutions were
+shattered by the excesses of their youth, and Henry became less
+remarkable as a young officer when stalwart men who had felt ere then
+the fatigues of war were falling at her side.  Charles hired a loose
+horse in one of the villages they passed through, and thus arrived
+fresh and strong at the place of encampment, a few miles from the
+stronghold of the brigands.  Henry came up in the afternoon, accompanied
+by about thirty men who, like herself, failed under the fatigues of
+the march.
+
+Rest under the circumstances was impossible.  The brigands were all
+around and no one could tell the moment of attack.  Some men were sent
+on as scouts to explore the hillside; they never returned.  This was
+sufficient indication of an ambuscade and the captain bravely determined
+to march his whole force at once into their hiding-place, knowing,
+when they were once surprised, they had no shelter afterwards.
+
+Those who have been to Mount Vesuvius, and who have had the hardihood
+to seek the exquisite Lacryma produced on the southwester slopes of
+the hill, will remember a peculiar ravine running for nearly a mile
+from the sandy part of the cone, and covered with a stunted green
+bush of fern-like leaves.  It is the nearest green spot to the calcined
+cone.  It assumes a gentle declivity towards the sea, and is then lost
+in the beautiful vineyards and gardens that cover the slopes of the
+mountain down to the houses of Torre del Greco.  The view from this
+spot is magnificent.  On the left is the beautiful town of Sorento,
+with houses as white as snow, running in detached villas along the
+sea-shore up to the smoky and roofless walls of Pompeii, whose unsightly
+ruins lend contrast to the scene around.  The azure bay seems to borrow
+more of the blue of heaven as it stretches far away to the horizon;
+the little steamers and innumerable yachts that ply between the islands
+give the scene animation and variety.  Around to the right we have the
+classic hills of Baia, the Campo Santo in its fantastic architecture,
+and then the green and leafy plains of the Campo Felice; beneath, the
+great city with its four hundred thousand souls, its red tiles and
+irregular masses of brick-work, contrasting with the gilded domes of
+the superb churches; and above, the terrible cone, vomiting forth its
+sulfurous smoke and darkening the sky with clouds of its own creation.
+
+The view that can be had from this place, and the interesting history
+of every inch of the country around, render it one of the most romantic
+spots in the world.  But, alas! it is now, as it was two hundred years
+ago, the home and retreat of those desperate Italian robbers known
+as brigands.  Woe betide the incautious traveller whom curiosity leads
+through the vineyards of that lonely scene!  The deeds of its outlawed
+and daring inhabitants would fill volumes.  It was here, too, as far
+as we can learn, our heroines found their field of battle.
+
+The troops had scarcely entered this ravine when a sharp, shrill whistle
+rang from one side of the mountain to the other.  Immediately human
+voices were heard on all sides, repeating in every pitch of tone, from
+bass to soprano, the word "Rione."  For several minutes the mountain
+echoed with the weird sound of the brigand war-cry; the troops were
+ordered to stand in readiness, and timid hearts like Henry's quailed
+at the awful moment.
+
+The earth rumbled under their feet, and dark, bluish columns of smoke
+curled in the air from the terrible cone; the sun was setting over the
+beautiful Bay of Naples in the color of blood, and the air was
+impregnated with the fumes of sulphur.  The wilderness of the spot,
+and nature's terrors convulsing the elements around, made, indeed,
+the moment before battle a dreadful moment for the delicate children
+of the French banker.
+
+A few minutes, and the battle was at its height.  A long and dreadful
+contest ensued.  The numbers were about equal on both sides.
+Fortunately, the brigands had not time to muster all at once, and the
+royalist troops met them in small but desperate bands.  No sooner was
+one defeated than another and another poured down from the sides of
+the mountain and disputed every inch of the way.  The brigands fought
+bravely, but were outnumbered, and towards midnight the bloodshed
+ceased.  All sounds had died away save the groans of the wounded and
+dying, and now and then a solitary whoop of a brigand chief from the
+distant hills, calling together the few straggling and scattered bands
+of rebels.
+
+The moment the heat of the combat was over the first thought that struck
+Charles was to look for Henry.  They were separated in the confusion
+of the fight.  She ran through the men, but could not find her.  Here
+and there she could discern in the pale light of a clouded moon some
+knot of soldiers binding up their wounds and recounting their escapes
+and their triumphs.  She hurriedly ran through them, enquiring for her
+brother-officer, but none knew anything of her.  She scanned every
+feature, she called her in every group, but in vain--no Henry was
+there.  The awful thought struck her--and her heart nearly broke under
+its pang--perhaps she is killed!  She flew across the bloody path they
+had passed; her mournful and shrill cry of "Enrico!" rolled over the
+bodies of the slain, and was echoed again and again with plaintive
+intensity from the surrounding hills.  Sometimes she even fancied the
+dying echo of her own shrill cry was the feeble answer of her wounded
+sister; and when she would pause to listen again, the valley around
+was wrapt in the stillness of death.  At length she came to the spot
+where the battle first commenced, and there, with a shriek that was
+heard in the distant encampment, she found among the first victims of
+that bloody night the lifeless corpse of her sister.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII.
+
+The Morning After the Battle.
+
+
+The morning sun rose dimly in a bank of clouds.  It found Charles
+still clinging to the remains of poor Aloysia, and bathing with kisses
+and tears the stiffened features of her beloved sister.  With a silken
+kerchief she had bandaged the fatal gash on her neck, believing she
+might be only in a swoon and might recover.  Hope, which is the last
+comfort to abandon man in his most desperate condition, scarcely
+retarded for Charles the awful reality of her bereavement.
+
+The pale moon that has rolled over so many generations, and lent its
+dim, silvery light to so many thrilling vicissitudes, never looked
+down on a sadder scene.  Death has no pang equal to the blow it give
+true affection.  No language could describe what the heart feels on
+occasions like this.  There sat the delicate French girl, alone in the
+dark night, on the side of Vesuvius, in the midst of the bleeding
+victims of the bloody fight, and clasping to her heart the cold,
+lifeless body of her ill-fated sister.
+
+Her sudden and awful end, swept, perhaps, into eternity without a
+moment's notice, to be buried in the ashes of the volcano, amidst the
+dishonored remains of outlaws and murderers--does not the thought
+strike us that this sad fate was more the due of Alvira than the
+innocent and harmless Aloysia?
+
+Alvira felt it, and her repentant heart was almost broke.
+
+"O Aloysia!" hear her moan over the angelic form, "you innocent and I
+guilty; you slain, judged, and I free to heap greater ingratitude on
+the Being who has saved me.  Aloysia, forgive!  Thou wert dragged up
+unwillingly to these desperate scenes of bloodshed by my infatuation.
+O God! strike me.  I am the wretch; let this angel live to honor thee
+in the angelic simplicity of innocence!"
+
+Never was a fairer flower blasted by the lightning of Heaven.  Neither
+Charles nor Henry knew what was before them in their march to Vesuvius.
+To surround and capture a few runaways was perhaps the most they
+expected; and Henry, in the confiding affection of her heart, clung
+to Charles, determined to bear fatigue and hardship rather than be
+separated from her.
+
+It must be a painful picture that fancy will paint of the last hour
+of this lovely child.  The anguish of her heart must have been keener
+than the deep wound that sent the life-streams to mingle with the lava
+of the mountain:  no one to minister a drop of water to her parched
+lips; no friendly voice to console her; the moans and imprecations of
+the wounded brigands grating on her ears; the thought that her sister,
+too, was perhaps lying in pain, and sinking from her wounds; and, above
+all--that which, perhaps, sent the last blush to her cheek--the fear
+of the discovery of her sex, and the rough gaze of a brutal soldiery.
+But Heaven's sympathizing spirits were gathered around this child of
+misfortune, and doubtless with her last sigh he breathed her pure
+soul into their hands, and the last wish was answered--for she was
+good and innocent before God.
+
+When the sun had fully risen, Charles was approached by a sergeant
+of the troops, who announced to her that the captain had died during
+the night from his wounds, and, as she was the senior officer, they
+waited her orders.  Dissembling her grief, Charles rose to her feet
+and gave directions that the bodies of the captain and her brother
+should be buried in their clothes and wrapped in the flag of the
+country.  The hardy veterans raised the delicate frame of Henry, and
+carried it on a rude bier to the hut where the remains of the captain
+were prepared for interment.  Silent and solemn was the funeral cortege.
+No drum, not a funeral note, was heard.  Every eye was wet, and the
+breast of Charles was not the only one that heaved the farewell sigh
+over the young and beautiful officer.
+
+Charles stood by to see the last of her sister.  The dark, black sand
+was poured down on her lovely face, and silently and quickly her
+mountain grave was filled by the blood-stained hands of her companions
+in arms.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII.
+
+Return--A Triumph.
+
+
+Charles had dreamt a golden dream.  Ambition's cup is full, but its
+draught is bitter.  On the march to Naples, in triumph, commanding
+the royal troops, who had completely beaten the brigands, were glories
+Charles never thought she was one day to obtain.  With her return to
+the city the war was ended, and the people were rejoicing in the
+restoration of peace.  The young captain who had returned so victorious
+from Vesuvius was the lion of the day.  The city gave her an ovation
+far beyond her most sanguine hopes.  Illuminations were instituted in
+her honor, her name was shouted in the streets, and the nobles and
+great ones of the state gathered around her as if the safety of the
+kingdom had depended on her own personal efforts.  For some time crowds
+of lazzaroli gathered around the entrance of the Molo to see the young
+and beautiful captain who had achieved such wonders; and we can fancy
+how sweetly would ring on the ears of our ambitious heroine the shout
+of the enthusiastic crowd sending far and wide the "Erira Carlo
+Pimontel!"  The King confirmed her position of captain, and sent her
+the iron and golden crosses of honor, only given to the bravest of the
+brave in those days of strife and warfare.
+
+But vanity of vanities, and all is vanity!  Let us raise the veil of
+deception that shrouds the emptiness of human joy.  Alvira has now
+gratified her heart's desires in everything she could have under the
+sun.  She had beauty, wealth, and fame, but she was like the pretty
+moth that hovers around the flame of the candle, and finds its ruin
+in the touch of the splendor it loves.  Poor Alvira was another child
+of Solomon that sighed over the emptiness of human joy; for bitter
+disappointment is the sad tale ever told in the realization of misguided
+hope.  Often, at midnight, when the unknown captain would return from
+the theatre or some festive entertainment given in her honor, she would
+sit at her table, wearied and disgusted, and weep bitterly.  The
+unnatural restraint necessary to preserve her disguise, the separation
+from all the comforts and sympathies common to her sex, and the painful
+reminiscences of the past wrung tears of misery from her aching heart.
+The dreams of Messina haunted her still, but increased in anguish
+and terror, as her thoughts could now fly from the lonely cave on the
+Alps to the battle-field on the side of Vesuvius.  Again the pangs
+of remorse poisoned every joy; again the angry countenance and clenched
+hand of her murdered father would bend over her restless couch; and
+again the scream of terror in the dark, silent midnight would summon
+her friends around her.  Deep and fervent the prayer that was poured
+forth from that sad and breaking heart that some providential
+circumstance would enable her to make the change she had no long
+premeditated.  That change is at hand.  Her mother's prayer is still
+pleading for her before the throne of God; he who cast an eye of mercy
+on the erring Magdalen had already written the name of Alvira in the
+book of life, and destined her to be one of the noblest models of
+repentance that adorn the latter history of the Church.  Let us come
+to the sequel of this extraordinary history; but first we must introduce
+our readers to a new character--a great and holy man, destined by
+Providence to save Alvira, and give the most interesting and most
+remarkable chapter in this romance of real life.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV.
+
+Alvira's Confession.
+
+
+                      Tremble, thou wretch,
+  Though hast within thee undivulged crimes,
+  Unwhipped of justice:  hide thee, thou bloody hand;
+  Thou perjured, and thou simular man of virtue,
+  Thou art incestuous:  caitiff, to pieces shake,
+  That under covert and convenient seeming
+  Hast practised on man's life:  close pent-up guilts,
+  Rive your concealing continents, and cry
+  These dreadful summoners grace.
+                                            -- Lear.
+
+
+It was a beautiful morning in the Lent of 1678.  The sun had risen
+over the Apennines, and flung its magnificence over the Bay of Naples.
+The smoke of Vesuvius cast its shadow like a monstrous pine over the
+vineyards and villas that adorned the mountain-side to the sea-shore.
+The morning was such as Byron gazed on in fancy through the sorrowful
+eyes of the eloquent heroine of one of his tragedies:
+
+
+  "So bright, so rolling back the clouds into
+  Vapors more lovely than the unclouded sky,
+  With golden pinnacles and snowy mountains,
+  And billows purpler than the ocean's, making
+  In heaven a glorious mockery of the earth,
+  So like we almost deem it permanent,
+  So fleeting we can scarcely call it aught
+  Beyond a vision, 'tis so transiently
+  Scattered along the eternal vault!"
+
+
+Whilst the eight hour was chiming from the tower of the old Gesu there
+issued from the monastery attacked to the church a priest accompanied
+by an acolyte bearing a large, plain cross and ringing a small bell.
+They moved in the direction of the mole or old fortress of the city.
+Soon a crowd followed--some bare-headed; others, especially the females,
+told their beads in silence.
+
+The traveller in Italy is aware of the pious custom practised by some
+of the religious communities of preaching in the open air to the people
+during the season of Lent.  Extraordinary things are related of these
+harangues.  The lives of the sainted missionaries ring with tales of
+the marvellous and miraculous powers given to God's servants when, in
+moments of fire and zeal, they went from their cloisters like beings
+of another world to awaken sinners to a sense of future terrors.  At
+one time we read of the saint's voice carried miraculously to a distance
+of several miles; the peasant working in the fields would hear the
+sweet sounds without seeing the speaker.  At another the funeral
+procession was arrested and the dead called from the bier to testify
+to the truth of their teaching.  Curing the cripple and restoring health
+to the sick were of ordinary occurrence.  Our blessed Lord told the
+messengers who came to enquire about him to report his miracles as
+a proof of his divinity:  the blind see, the lame walk, the sick are
+restored to health; but greater than all his reversions of the natural
+laws were the humility and the mysterious arrangement of his providence
+which he prophetically announced when he told his disciples that those
+who should come after him would perform greater miracles than he.
+There are few of the Thaumaturgi more celebrated than the humble father
+who has just issued from the Gesu to thunder forth with superhuman
+eloquence the truths of God and religion.
+
+No sooner had the people heard the little bell of the attendant and
+seen the venerable priest leave the college than they gathered from
+various quarters, and seemed to vie with each other in getting nearest
+to him.
+
+He was a tall, thin man, his hair gray, shading a majestic forehead,
+and but slightly wrinkled with the summers of over sixty years; his
+eyes were partly closed, but when preaching they glowed with animation,
+and were brightened by the tears that dimmed them; his long, wiry
+fingers were interlocked and raised towards his breast in the attitude
+of deep contemplation.  The rough soutane and leather belt, the beads
+and missionary cross partly hid in his breast, declared him to be a
+follower of St. Ignatius.  In the hallowed austerity of his whole
+appearance, in the sweetness blended with religious gravity, and in
+the respect and love manifested in the ever increasing crowd, one
+easily learned he was more than an ordinary man.  The people of Naples
+knew him by the endearing name of Brother Francis; history has since
+written his name in letters of gold on the alters of the Catholic
+Church as St. Francis of Jerome.
+
+It must have been a treat to the people who heard such saints as Francis
+of Jerome preach.  Natural eloquences is a rare and powerful gift;
+when guided by education and study, the talent exercises a marvellous
+influence on man; but add to these two a zeal and fervor of spirit
+such as burned in the mortified spirit of the man of God, and we have
+a power that is nothing short of supernatural and irresistible.
+
+From a heart all aglow with divine love he soon enkindled in his hearers
+that fire his divine Master came to kindle on earth.  His sermons were
+miracles.  So great was the crowd around him at times that it would
+be impossible for any human voice to reach his furthest hearers.  Yet
+every word of the great preacher went with silvery tone and moving
+power, as if wafted on angel breathings, to the ears of sinners whom
+chance or grace had brought to join the immense crowd that surrounded
+his rude platform.  Each sermon brought hundreds to repentance.  Eyes
+that were long dry melted into tears, and hearts that were strangers
+to every sweet and holy influence throbbed with emotion.  Efforts to
+check the pent-up feelings were expressed by louder and convulsive
+sobs; some knelt and prayed, others beat their breasts in the agony
+of contrition.  The immense concourse of people, simple and religious
+minded, at all times impressionable, were, under the appeals of Francis,
+moved as in times of public calamity, and the whole crowd swayed to
+and fro as the deep moved by the storm--now trembling in terror, now
+ashamed of sin and ingratitude, and again encouraged with hope, whose
+cheerful beams the orator would cause to dart through the dark clouds
+he himself had gathered over their mental vision.
+
+On one occasion a courtesan ridiculed from her bed-room window the
+words of the saint.  She fell dead immediately.  When he heard of the
+awful judgement passed on this hapless woman, he ordered her body to
+be brought to him.  Then, amidst a death-like silence, he cried out
+in a voice of thunder that penetrated the regions of the damned:
+"Catherine, where art thou now?"
+
+The soul answered with a shriek that sent a thrill through the assembled
+thousands:  "In hell!"
+
+Although in scenes of terror like these Francis thundered forth the
+awful destinies of the judged, yet the mercy of God towards the sinner
+was his favorite theme.  He looked on himself as called in a special
+manner to seek out the lost sheep, to soften down the roughness found
+on the path of repentance, to aid in the struggles willing souls find
+in their efforts at reformation.  Francis knew, as all masters of the
+spiritual life have learned, there is more power in the eloquence of
+forgiving love than in the terrors of retribution; hence, with tears
+and burning sentiments of sympathy for the erring children of men,
+he led his hearers as it were by the hand to the Father of the
+prodigal--to that Jesus who forgave and loved the penitent Magdalen.
+
+Francis has now ascended his platform.  The crowd are swelling around.
+He raises the sign of redemption over their heads; in a few majestic
+sentences he commences his subject; the fire is kindling in his eye,
+and the thunder is deepening in his splendid voice.  The listeners
+are wrapt in breathless attention.
+
+On the outskirts of the crowd there is a young officer, slender,
+graceful, tidy to a fault.  It is Alvira.
+
+She was passing down the Toledo, and had already heard the saint before
+she had seen him.  She had heard of the great preacher, but was afraid
+to meet him.  Grace had followed her in all her wanderings, and the
+prayers of her mother were still heard at the throne of God.  The crowd
+is so great Alvira cannot pass to the Molo, where she was quartered
+with her regiment.  She must listen.
+
+Strange, consoling ways of divine grace!  It was thee, O Lord! who
+drew they servant from his convent on that auspicious morning; thou
+did'st gather the crowd around him, and inspire him with the words
+and theme of his moving discourse!  It was thy mercy, smiling with
+compassion on a noble but erring soul, which brought her to listen
+to those words that would bring thy grace to her heart!
+
+Like one whose eye has caught a brilliant meteor flying through the
+heavens, and remains gazing on it until it has disappeared, Alvira
+could not remove her eyes from Francis.  When she saw his saintly
+figure standing on the rude platform, holding in his outstretched
+hand the saving sign of redemption, she was seized with an unaccountable
+feeling of awe.  Although every word of the sermon was heard and
+weighed, it seemed as if the pent-up memories of her soul took
+precedence of her thoughts, and rushed on her with overwhelming force,
+like the winds let loose by the storm-god of old.  Everything strange
+or sad in her past career lent its quota of color to the dark picture
+remorse, with cruel and masterly hand, delineated before her troubled
+spirit.  The struggle, the agony she had learned to brave in the Duomo
+at Milan and the fortress of Messina, rose again with hydra fangs
+from the tomb of oblivion in which recent excitements had buried it.
+None but her guardian angel knew her soul was once more the battle-field
+of contending feelings.  At length a crimson blush passed over her
+marble features; a crystal tear-drop dimmed her eye; another sprang
+from the reservoirs of the heart and stole down the blushing cheek.
+Alvira wept.
+
+Tears have a language of their own deep and powerful; they tell of the
+weakness of the human heart, not its triumphs; for passion has a throne
+that tears may wash in vain.  It is easier to drive the mighty river
+from its long-loved bed than the soul from the normal state of its
+gratified tendencies.
+
+"The heart," says St. Liguori, "where passion reigns, has become a
+crystal vase filled with earth no longer penetrated by the rays of
+the sun."  The iron pedestal of passion's throne was not yet shivered
+in the heart of Alvira, nor were tears a sign that the sun of grace
+had pierced the crystal vase of the worldly heart.  Great will be
+the grace that will draw Alvira from the zenith of a golden dream in
+which a triumphant ambition has placed her above her sex, and great
+amongst the heroes of the manly sex she feigned.  Her conversion will
+be a miracle--a miracle of sweet violence, such as drew the Magdalens,
+the Augustines, and the Cortonas from the trammels of vice to the holy
+and happy path of repentance.
+
+The sermon is over.  The crowd is still between Alvira and the Molo;
+she must wait.
+
+The people are gradually dispersing.  Some go to the church to follow
+up the holy inspirations given, to throw themselves at the feet of a
+confessor, to break the chains of sin; others hasten to their homes
+or daily avocations, wondering, pleased, and sanctified in good desires
+and resolutions that came gushing from their hearts.
+
+Alvira is standing to one side alone and wrapt in thought.  Suddenly
+she looks up.  Something catches her eye.  She starts; a tremble passes
+from head to foot.  She looks again; her worst terrors are realized.
+It is--Father Francis is coming towards her!
+
+"But he can't be coming to me," she thought to herself.  She looked
+around to see if there were any other object to bring the father in
+that direction; but there was no poor creature to ask his charity, no
+poor cripple to seek his sympathy; she was almost alone.  She could
+have fled, but felt herself fixed to the ground, and with desperate
+efforts endeavored to conceal her excitement.  He approaches nearer;
+with glistening eye she watches and hopes some fortuitous circumstances
+may call him aside.  Their glance meets; she blushes and trembles,
+Father Francis is before her.
+
+For a moment he gazed on the young captain with a kind, penetrating
+look; and a smile on his features seemed to express a friendly
+recognition.  Calling her by her assumed name, he said to her, almost
+in a whisper:  "Charles, go to confession; God wishes thee well."
+
+Alvira was relieved.  The kind, gentle manner of the father calmed
+the storm of conflicting fears.  Rejecting the inward calls of grace,
+and hoping she was not discovered, she replied with some hesitation:
+
+"But, father, I don't require to go to confession.  I have not done
+anything wrong."
+
+Her voice faltered, and the blush of conscious falsehood grew deeper
+and deeper on her glowing features.
+
+Father Francis drew himself up with majesty; his eye beamed with the
+glow of inspiration, and in a solemn reproof he addressed the trembling
+girl:
+
+"You have done nothing wrong, nothing to merit the judgments of a
+terrible God--you, who murdered your father in the snows of the Alps,
+robbed him of ill-gotten wealth, spent it in gaming, and dragged your
+innocent sister in the path or your own shameless adventure!"
+
+"Father! father!" cried Alvira, bursting into convulsive sobs.
+
+"Maria Alvira Cassier," continued the man of God in a milder tone,
+"go and change those garments; cease this tale of guilty hypocrisy.
+But--"
+
+Advancing towards her, he took her hand, and, resuming the paternal
+smile that relaxed his solemn features and banished her fears, said
+in a low tone:  "But come with me to the Gesu."
+
+Alvira obeyed.  She was thunderstruck.  The revelation of the great
+secrets of her life summoned up paralyzing fears; but, accustomed
+to brave the succumbing weakness of the feminine character, and
+encouraged by the paternal manner of the father, she did not faint,
+but buried her face in her hands and wept.
+
+In silence she followed Father Francis.  She skilfully concealed her
+emotions; the tears were brushed away as rapidly as they overflowed.
+In passing the squares that separated them from the church, Alvira
+had resolved to unbosom herself to the good father.  Like the angel
+that led Peter from his prison, she knew this sainted man was destined
+to lead her from the prison of her hypocrisy.  Where grace has not
+conquered, consequences are weighed, the future becomes too dark and
+unknown for the cowardly heart, and temporal evils assume the weight
+of eternal woes; the blinded self-love yields, and the moment of grace
+is abandoned.  But Alvira's conversion was complete, and, without one
+doubt or fear for the future, she handed herself to the guidance of
+the venerable father, who had learned by inspiration from heaven the
+spiritual maladies of her soul.
+
+The whole of that day was spent in the church.  She crouched into an
+angle behind one of the large pillars.  Like the dew that freshens
+and vivifies the vegetation that has been dried up by the parching
+sun, the exhilarating breathings of the divine Spirit spread over
+her soul that peace which surpasseth all understanding.  In the fervor
+of her first real moments of prayer, the hours passed as seconds;
+unmindful of food, of the duties incumbent on her military profession,
+and of the busy world around, she was not roused from her reverie
+until the golden floods of the setting sunlight fell in tinted splendor
+through the stained-glass windows of the old Gothic church.
+
+As the church bells were merrily chiming the Ave Maria, a gentle tap
+on her shoulder called her attention.  It was Father Francis.  He had
+watched her all the day with a secret joy; he knew the value of moments
+like these in maturing the resolutions of the converted soul, and, as
+he had not yet completed his arrangements, he was afraid his penitent
+might slip from him in the crowd and be exposed to temptations that
+might discourage her; the cold blast of the world might shake to the
+ground the fabric he had commenced to build.  He bent his venerable
+countenance to her ear, whispered a word of consolation, and bade her
+not leave till he came for her.
+
+The father moved silently and thoughtfully through the sombre aisles;
+now and then he would stop to converse with some child of grace, for
+he had many awaiting his spiritual aid.  With smiles of holy joy, he
+imparted consolation to each, and sent them to their homes accompanied
+by those spirits that rejoice in the conversion of the sinner.
+
+A few moments, and the lights were extinguished, the crowd is gone.
+The cough and suppressed sigh are no longer heard from the deep aisles,
+and the footsteps of the ever-changing crowd have ceased to clatter
+on the marble pavement.  The solitary lamp in the sanctuary cast a
+fitful shadow through the silent and abandoned church, and was the
+only indication of the presence of Him who rules in the vast spheres
+of the heavens.  Alvira felt happier in this lonely moment before the
+Most Holy Sacrament.  The fruit of years of penance, and the conquest
+of turbulent, rebellious passions, have often been gained in moments
+of fervor before the alter.  Like sand, changed to transparent crystal
+glass under the blow-pipe, the heart is melted and purified under the
+fire of love that darts in invisible streams from the loving Victim
+of the tabernacle.
+
+The closing of the church door and the rattling of carriage wheels in
+the direction of the Chaja close an eventful day, recorded in golden
+letter in heaven's history of repentant humanity.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV.
+
+Honor Saved.
+
+
+A series of surprises followed this memorable conversion.  Alvira's
+absence from the garrison was the subject of serious comment.  Rumor
+was busy, and disposed of the young captain by every imaginable
+violent death.  One report seemed the most probable and gained ground.
+It was thought the partisans of the defeated party, remembering the
+victory of Vesuvius, and galled at the popularity of the young captain,
+had waylaid and murdered him.  At the same time the mangled body of
+a young man was found washed into the river by the tide; it was
+mutilated and disfigured beyond recognition; the populace claimed
+it to be the body of their favorite, and loud and still rang the
+indignant cry for vengeance.  The city was in commotion.  The
+authorities were induced to believe the report, and large rewards were
+offered for the apprehension of the murderers.  'Tis but a spark that
+may set the wood on fire; and popular feeling, fired by a random rumor,
+now blazed in all the fury of a political conflagration.
+
+In the midst of the commotion the commandant of the forces received
+a polite note requesting his presence at the residence of the
+Marchioness de Stefano.  Puzzled at the strange summons, but polite
+to a fault, he appeared in grand tenu at the appointed hour in the
+salons of the Marchioness.  A young lady was ushered in to the
+apartment.  She was dressed in black, wore no jewelry, and seemed a
+little confused; a majestic mien set off some natural charms, but her
+features had an expression of care and sadness such as is read on the
+countenance of the loving fair one who has been widowed in her bloom.
+Her eyes were red, for many tears had dimmed them; her voice was weak,
+for shame had choked the utterances in their birth; her whole demeanor
+expressed deep anxiety and trouble.
+
+The commandant was kind-hearted, but a stern ruler in those days of
+trouble; he had seen in the revolutions of many years the miseries
+and sorrows of life; though insensible to the horrors of the
+battle-field, he felt a deep, touching sympathy with its real victims
+who survive and suffer for years in silent woe, in affections that have
+been ruthlessly blasted by cruel war.  The feeling of compassion
+towards the strange lady introduced to him were deeply enhanced by
+the remarks by which she opened the conversation.
+
+"I sent for you, sir," commenced the lady in a subdued tone, "to speak
+to you about Captain Charles Pimontel."
+
+The veteran soldier, believing she was his betrothed, that she was
+torn by cruel destiny from the object of her affections, endeavored
+to soothe her troubled spirit by the balm of kindness and consolation.
+
+"Ah! madame," he replied in his blandest manner, "if report be true,
+a cruel fate has removed him for a while from thy embrace.  Young,
+brave, and amiable, he was the darling of our troops, and fortune
+seemed to lead our gallant young captain to a brilliant career; but
+some foul assassin's hand has cut the flower ere it bloomed; destiny,
+as cruel as it has been mysterious, has darkened his sun ere yet it
+shone in the zenith of day!"
+
+"Oh! sir, it may not yet be true that he has met such a sad fate,"
+retorted the lady.
+
+"Alas!" replied the commandant, "yesterday evening the youth's body
+was washed up on our beach; the wounds of twenty stilettos gaped on
+his mangled corpse, and the lampreys of our bay fed on his noble flesh
+as they would on the vile slaves cast to them by the monster Nero.
+These eyes have seen the horrid sight; though we could not recognize
+the brave youth, we wept as if our own son had fallen by cowardly
+hands."
+
+The old commandant was somewhat excited; before the warm tear had welled
+from the fountains of sympathy, the young lady spoke in an animated
+and excited manner:
+
+"But, sir, there is surely some mistake.  It cannot be said Charles
+Pimontel was murdered; does it follow because the unrecognized body
+of some hapless victim of a street brawl has been washed on the beach
+that it must necessarily be the body of the captain?  Do you not think
+his murderers would pay dearly for this attack on him?  Have any
+witnesses come forward to swear to his assassination?  I will not
+believe in his death until stronger proofs have been given; and I may
+be intruding on the precious time of our commandant, but I have sought
+this interview with you have found the murdered remains of Charles
+Pimontel."
+
+"Love, madame," rejoined the commandant sentimentally, "clings to
+forlorn hopes, and in its sea of trouble will grasp at straws.  The
+whole city has proclaimed the murder of the captain; our military
+chapel is draped in gloom, and I have given orders that all the garrison
+be in attendance on the morrow at the obsequies."
+
+The lady, who at first intended a strange surprise for the commanding
+officer, began to fear things were going too far, and that no time
+was to be lost in declaring the real fate of the captain.  She arose
+quickly, and, approaching near to him, spoke with strong emphasis:
+
+"I beseech you, sir, to stay these proceedings; I tell you on my word
+of honor the captain is not dead."
+
+"Then you know something of him?" interrupted the commandant.  "I
+command you, madame, in the name of the King, to tell me of his
+whereabouts.  If he has, without sufficient cause, absented himself
+from military duty, by my sword the rash youth shall be punished.
+Besides playing the fool with the people, the inviolable sanctity of
+the military constitutions has been violated.  Madame, your lover,
+perhaps, has forgotten himself over his cups.  If secreted within these
+walls, produce him, that he may know, for thy sake, and in consideration
+of his first fault, the leniency of his sentence for violation of
+our military rule."
+
+"Sir," replied the young woman, drawing herself up majestically, and
+fearlessly confronting the aged officer, whose inviolable fidelity
+to military honor made him warm in his indignation at the supposed
+delinquency of his subaltern--"sir, the secret of the captain's absence
+and his present abode is committed to me; but I shall not divulge the
+information you ask until you promise me that, having shown you
+reasonable cause for his seeming fault, you will not only acquit him
+of his supposed crime of dereliction of duty, but that his honor shall
+be preserved unstained before his fellow-officers and men."
+
+The proposition seemed honorable to the commandant, and he immediately
+replied:
+
+"I swear by my sword it shall be so."
+
+"Then, sir, see before you the offender.  I am Charles Pimontel!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVI.
+
+Repentance.
+
+
+On the road that led the traveller to the ancient village of Torre
+del Greco, and about a mile from the populous parts of the city, there
+stood a neat little cottage.  In the front there was a flower garden,
+small but charmingly pretty; the doors and windows were surrounded
+with a woodbine creeper that gave an air of comfort to the little
+dwelling.  The door was ever closed.  Few were seen to pass in and
+out, and no noise ever betrayed the presence of its inmates.
+
+Here for many years our young penitent Alvira passed a holy and solitary
+life.  After the stirring scenes of the preceding chapters, Father
+Francis procured from the military authorities for his Magdalen, as
+he was wont to call her, the full pay of a captain as a retiring
+pension.  This remarkable circumstance may be authenticated by reference
+to the military books still preserved in the archives of the Molo at
+Naples.  Her rank and pension were confirmed by the king.
+
+Under the able direction of the man of God, Alvira gave herself to
+full correspondence with the extraordinary graces offered by our blessed
+Lord.  Her austerities and fervor increased until they reached the
+degrees of heroic sanctity.  She knelt and wept for hours before her
+crucifix; she slept on hard boards and only allowed herself sufficient
+to meet the demands of nature.  She lived on herbs, and the fast of
+Lent was so severe that Father Francis saw a miraculous preservation.
+Long before daylight she knelt on the steps of the Gesu waiting for
+the opening of the doors, and this austerity she never failed to
+practice in the midst of rain or cold, until her last illness chained
+her involuntarily to her couch, where her submission to the will of
+God was equally meritorious.
+
+Several terrible scenes of judgement, sent by Almighty God on
+unrepentant sinners, had, in the very commencement of her conversion,
+a most salutary influence on the feeble struggles of Alvira.  Her
+confidence in the Blessed Virgin was much enhanced by a severe act
+of St. Francis towards one of the members of the Congregation of the
+Most Holy Mother.
+
+A young man of this congregation got suddenly rich, and, with wealth,
+self-conceit and pride entered his heart.  He considered it necessary,
+to preserve his respectability, to separate himself from the humble
+society he hitherto frequented, and cease to be a member of the
+Congregation of the Madonna, composed of industrious and virtuous
+youths who labored honestly for their livelihood.  St. Francis, on
+hearing of this slight on the congregation and insult to Mary, was
+fired with a holy indignation.  He sought the young man, and rang in
+his ears the prophetic warnings which, in the case of this great saint,
+were never uttered in vain to the unheeding.  Again and again
+St. Francis warned, but pride was still triumphant.  One Sunday
+afternoon, after the usual meeting of the confraternity, the saint
+went to the alter of sodality; it was the altar of the Dolors.  Seven
+daggers seemed to pierce the Virgin's heart.  Ascending the altar,
+he cast a sorrowful glance on the weeping countenance of the Queen
+of Sorrows, and said:  "Most Holy Virgin, this young man has been for
+you a most acute sword, piercing your heart; behold, I will relieve
+you of it."  So saying, he took one of the poniards from the statue,
+and at the same time announced to the members that the proud young
+man was expelled from the congregation.
+
+Let those who fancy that such reprobations have not a corresponding
+echo in the judgements of God tremble in reading the effects of this
+simple but terrible excommunication.
+
+Like sand through the perforated vessel, the young man's wealth passed
+away; one month found him a cringing debtor, another found him a
+beggar, a third found him dying in a public institution, abandoned
+by God and man.
+
+On another occasion Alvira was present when a terrible judgement of
+God upon a hardened sinner thrilled the whole city with awe.
+St. Francis was preaching in one of the streets during Lent.  He
+happened to pause and address a crowd near the house of an impious,
+ill conducted woman, who came immediately to her window to laugh and
+mock at the man of God.  Having gratified herself tot he disgust of
+the crowd, she finally slammed to the window violently, uttering at
+the same time some filthy and unbecoming remark.  St. Francis stood
+immovable fro a moment; his eye was fixed on heaven; and then, in a
+voice head half over the city, he cried out:  "My God, how terrible
+are thy judgments!  That unfortunate woman has dropped dead."
+
+The groans and confusion of the inmates soon convinced the crowd of
+the awful fact, for the corpse of the hapless wretch was brought into
+the street where it was exposed to the terrified people.
+
+These and similar instances of the judgement of God witnessed by Alvira
+had a salutary effect on her trembling soul.  The fear of God, which
+is the beginning of wisdom, erected its watch-tower around the citadel
+of her heart; the virtues, once entered, were not permitted to flee,
+and soon won for this penitent soul the sweets of the illuminative
+degree of sanctity.
+
+St. Francis, a master in the science of the saints, soon recognized
+the extraordinary graces destined for this chosen soul.  Full of
+gratitude and love for God, he spared no effort to correspond with
+the sublime destiny entrusted to him; hence in the after-history of
+those two holy souls the marvels of virtue and sanctity intermingled,
+so that at times it would seem doubtful whether the miracles recorded
+were given to the exalted sanctity and zeal of the holy priest or to
+the weeping virgin penitent, so privileged and so loved in the forgiving
+memory of God.
+
+On one occasion a young mother lost her infant.  Death had stricken
+the little flower ere it had blossomed.  The mother was poor and unable
+to bury the child.  With an unbounded confidence in the charity and
+zeal of St. Francis, the bright thought struck her:  If she could only
+get this good man interested in her behalf, all would be accomplished.
+Accordingly, she made for the church of the Gesu by daylight.  Only
+one individual was before her waiting for the church to be opened.
+It was Magdalen.  Even from Magdalen she concealed the object of her
+early visit, and pressed closer to her heart the dead treasure she
+intended as a present for Father Francis.  The church opened; she stole
+around the dark aisles, whence the daylight had not yet banished the
+shades of night, and noiselessly approached the confessional of the
+holy man.  She placed the dead child on the seat, and hurried to some
+recess of the great church, where she could watch the happy issue of
+this ingenious mode of disposing of her child.  The early morning
+hours wore away, and at length the wished for moment came.  The vestry
+door is opened.  The tall, mortified form of St. Francis appeared at
+the foot of the altar.  He prayed awhile, and rose to go to his
+confessional.  But the young mother watched with her heart leaping to
+her mouth.  He did not go to his tribunal; he moved majestically down
+the church, and came to Magdalen's corner where Alvira was wrapt in
+prayer.  He whispered something to her.  They prayed for a moment,
+then Alvira flitted like a shadow through the dark aisles towards
+the confessional of Father Francis.  She entered and took the infant
+child in her arms.  The child was alive.  The mother came rushing
+from her hiding-place to claim the infant, and when she received it
+into her embrace the man of God raised his index finger in the act
+of warning, and with a sweet, forgiving smile on his countenance,
+said to the young mother:  "My child, don't put any more dead babies
+in my confessional."
+
+Alvira had to undergo a severe trial in the absence of Father Francis.
+He was directed by his superiors to commence his missions in the country
+districts, and was virtually removed from Naples for some years.  Before
+leaving, he fortified his chosen children with salutary admonitions,
+but for Alvira he had special words of encouragement and consolation.
+It pleased God to let him know in her behalf that, in return for her
+sincere repentance and deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin, before
+her death three extraordinary favors would be conferred on her, which
+would also be the warning of the setting sun of her career in life.
+Alvira treasured his words in her heart, and in deep humility wondered
+at the goodness of God.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVII.
+
+The Privileges of Holy Souls.
+
+
+An extraordinary miracle is said, in the life of St. Francis, to have
+taken place in the house where Alvira was present.  St. Francis had
+an aged brother living in the city--a man of eminent sanctity, but
+suffering much from his infirmities.  St. Francis prevailed on Alvira
+to attend him and nurse him in his illness.  He could not have been
+trusted to more tender or willing hands.
+
+Virtue and affection lent their powerful aids to render Alvira a
+charming nurse.  But her labor of love was not very protracted, for
+it pleased God to cast the last and fatal fever on Cataldus, the invalid
+brother of the saint.  At the time the malady was increasing and death
+imminent, St. Francis was absent from the city on a mission to Recale,
+a place about sixteen miles from Naples.  Cataldus prayed to be
+permitted to see his brother before death but the malady seemed to
+increase so rapidly there was very slight probability of his return
+in time.
+
+Alvira had retired to an adjoining apartment to seek relief in prayer.
+She suddenly heard some strange sounds in the room of her patient.
+She flew towards the chamber, and there, to her astonishment, she
+beheld St. Francis embracing his brother.
+
+"Go," said the saintly man to the invalid--"go with courage and
+confidence whither God thy father calls thee, and where the saints
+await thee.  Remember God is a good master, and know that in a short
+time I will follow thee."
+
+Then drawing Alvira aside, he whispered to her:  "My child, know that
+Cataldus is going with rapid strides to eternity.  You must still
+assist him with love and patience.  To-night at four he will die.
+I must be away now, but I hope to see him again before he dies."
+
+Having thus spoken, alone and, contrary to his custom, without any
+one to accompany him, he left the house.  Cataldus, Alvira, and a
+servant in the house testified to having seen him in Naples in their
+house; the servant even testified that he entered through closed
+doors; whilst two fathers who were with him at Recale gave sworn
+testimony that St. Francis was with them at the very time he was
+seen and spoken to at Naples.
+
+And when the hour foreseen by this great saint, in which death was to
+place his cold hand on the brow of Cataldus, was at hand, the couch
+of the dying was again blessed by his spirit; but Alvira did not on
+this occasion see him, but she saw the recognition that cast a beam
+of joy over the face of the dying man, and she heard the sweet accents
+of consolation the saint was permitted to impart.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVIII.
+
+A Vision of Purgatory--A Dear One Saved.
+
+
+Like lengthening shadows of evening creeping over the silent ruin, death
+was fast drawing the shades of its final night over the austerities
+and the virtues of Alvira.  The promises of St. Francis filled her
+heart with a cup of joy that rarely falls to the lot of mortals this
+side of the grave.
+
+Vespers are finished at the Gesu; the organ is silent, the crowd have
+departed, and, in the mellow twilight of an autumn eve, we discern
+only a few pious souls crouched behind the pillars, or pouring forth
+their last fervent aspirations before some favorite altar or saintly
+shrine.  Soon all have left, and the silence of the abandoned sanctuary
+shrouds the fabric in greater solemnity.  The aromatic incense still
+floats in nebulous veils around the tabernacle.
+
+A loud breathing, an expression of joy from a dark recess, announced
+the presence of some one still in the church.  The sounds came from
+the quarter known to the pious frequenters of the church as Magdalen's
+corner, so named because there was near to it an altar dedicated to
+the great penitent St. Magdalen, and because here St. Francis' Magdalen
+spent long hours in tears and prayer.  On the evening in question
+Alvira had remained longer than usual to commune with Almighty God.
+It was a festival day, and her soul felt all the glow of fervor and
+spiritual joy which at times wraps the pious spirit into foretastes
+of celestial happiness.  The hours passed swiftly by, for fervent
+prayer is not tedious to the loving.
+
+She pondered in her mind what could be the graces or favors promised
+her in the last interview with her spiritual director.  Her humility
+had not dared to seek favors; she was still overwhelmed with the
+thought of the bitter past; more time for repentance would be the
+signal favor she would venture to solicit from the God she had so
+much offended.
+
+Yet the mercy and goodness of God are more mysterious to us mortals
+when we consider them lavished in extraordinary munificence on the
+souls of poor sinners.  When we feel crushed to the earth in our
+unworthiness, the forgiving spirit of God lifts us up and pours around
+us consolations which are the privilege of the innocent.  Thus the
+humble Alvira little dreamt what might be the grand consolations
+destined for her; but the time of their fulfilment has come, and we
+find her startled from an ecstasy in the church in which one of the
+promised favors was bestowed on this child of grace.  She described
+to Father Francis what happened with many tears of joy.
+
+Whilst wrapt in prayer in the lonely moments that followed the
+Benediction of the Most Holy Sacrament and the closing of the church
+doors, she suddenly saw the altar and sanctuary disappear, and in their
+stead a luminous bank of moving clouds; they were white as the
+snow-drift, and crystallized in a flood of light like Alpine peaks
+in the winter sunshine.
+
+These clouds moved rapidly before her astonished gaze, occasionally
+she saw through their rents a tinge of red flame that glowed in the
+fleecy mist like the crimson linings of sunset.  The brighter clouds
+gradually faded; the flames became fiercer and more distinct; they
+seemed to leap in fury around the altar and sanctuary.  Alvira
+struggled in doubt for a moment.  Perhaps a real conflagration was
+consuming the tabernacle.  A scream of agony was already on her lips,
+when the scene glided into a still more vivid reality, leaving no
+doubt as to its character.  In the burning element human beings
+appeared writhing in pain; angels of dazzling brightness floated over
+the fire, and every moment caught the outstretched arms of some
+fortunate soul whose purgatorial probation had terminated; the angel
+would carry the soul to a distant sphere of brightness whither
+Alvira's weak mortal gaze could not follow.
+
+Suddenly there darted from the far light an angel clothed with the
+brilliancy of the sun.  With the speed of lightning he plunged far
+down the purgatory fire; his brightness was so great that Alvira
+could follow him even through the flames.  There the angel found a
+young, beautiful soul, deep in agony, clothed with crimson fire.  A
+smile of ineffable joy lit up the countenance of the sufferer--the
+message from heaven was understood.  The angel lifted this soul from
+the fire, and, pausing for a moment on the peak of a lambent flame,
+the angelic deliverer and the liberated soul, now became angelic
+in brilliancy, paused to look and smile on Alvira.
+
+Her heart leaped, her soul trembled.  She recognized the features.
+In a convulsive effort to utter the loved name of Aloysia, the vision
+passed away, and she found herself in the dark church and on the cold
+flags, weeping away the overflow of a heart too full of joy.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIX.
+
+Unexpected Meeting.
+
+
+Late on a cold night in the winter of 1706 a sick-call came to the
+Jesuit college attached to the Gesu.  Alvira Cassier was ill, and
+requested the attendance of one of the fathers.
+
+Some months had passed since the consoling vision in which she saw
+the purified soul of Aloysia carried to a crown of immortal bliss.
+Since then the great St. Francis had passed to his crown.  His holy
+spirit hovered in protecting love over Alvira.  She recurred to him
+in her troubles, and always with remarkable success.  Miracles of
+cures and conversion, effected through the humble prayers of the
+penitent and the powerful intercession of the deceased apostle, are
+registered in the great book of life, to be read on the great
+accounting-day.
+
+Alvira sighed over the prolongation of her exile.  Her heart longed
+to be with Christ; she soared in spirit over the abyss that separated
+her from the object she loved.
+
+Yet two more signs were to announce the happy moment of her freedom.
+She knew the fate of Aloysia, raised from the searching flame and
+introduced to the saints, was the first of these favors promised
+by St. Francis.  The other was equally extraordinary.
+
+The illness of Alvira caused a sigh of regret at the Jesuit College.
+Every one whose heart was interested in the glory of God would have
+reason to sigh over her lost example, her influence over sinners, and
+the edification of her exalted virtues.
+
+A priest is wrapped in his cloak; he carries the most Holy Sacrament
+and the holy oils.  A levite accompanies him, carrying a lamp and
+ringing a bell.  Unmindful of the inclemency of the weather, they
+move on through the abandoned streets, now filled by crowds of unseen
+angels, who take the place of man and honor the Holy of Holies.
+
+The priest is a young Frenchman who has just come to Naples.  To
+confer a favor on Alvira, the superior sent him to St. Francis's
+penitent that she might have the consolation of her own language
+at the trying hour of her death.  He is a tall, thin figure on the
+decline of manhood; in the graceful outline of features sweet and
+attractive we read the marks of much mortification.  A halo of religion
+and sanctity envelopes him with that reverential awe we give to true
+virtue.
+
+He has entered the room.  Alvira starts.
+
+She has seen that face before; that noble brow; that lofty mien;
+that irresistible sweetness of look.  He is some acquaintance, perhaps
+met casually in the rambles of youthful folly.  Reverence for the
+Blessed Sacrament banished further curiosity, and Alvira, with
+closed eyes and hands folded on her crucifix, joined in the solemn
+prayers recited on such occasions.
+
+When all the prescribed ceremonies were completed, the good priest
+drew near the couch of the suffering invalid, and, allowing a moment
+for a relaxation of thought and for conversation, mildly enquired if
+she suffered much pain.
+
+"So they tell me you have come from Paris, my child," we fancy we hear
+the good father commencing a conversation that leads to a strange
+discovery.
+
+"Yes, father, 'tis my native city."
+
+"And what was your family name?"
+
+"Cassier."
+
+"Cassier!" replied the priest, with a thrill of surprise.  "Did he
+live in Rue de Seine?"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"You had a sister?"
+
+"Yes; but she is now in heaven.  She was killed on Mount Vesuvius."
+Alvira wept.
+
+A startling suspicion had crept over the good priest.  Was it possible
+that the invalid sinking into eternity in a sunset of sanctity and of
+heroic penance, formerly the chivalrous captain of Vesuvian fame,
+was no other than his own sister?
+
+"And what became of your brother?" asked the Jesuit after a pause,
+and looking anxiously into Alvira's emaciated countenance.
+
+"Ah! father," she replied, "I would give worlds to know.  About thirty
+years ago, when our home was comfortable, he suddenly disappeared
+from us; no one could tell what became of him; we knew he was called
+by God to a holier life, and it was our impression at the time he
+fled to join some strict religious order.  Poor dear Aloysia and
+myself used to pain him by turning his pious intentions to ridicule.
+His disappearance broke my poor mother's heart, for she died very
+soon afterwards."
+
+A long, deep silence ensued.  Pere Augustin--for that was his name
+in religion--held his hands clasped up at his lips whilst Alvira was
+speaking.  He remained motionless; his eyes were fixed on a spot on
+the floor.  It was evident a struggle was going on within him.  There
+could be no longer any doubt, and he was puzzled whether he should
+declare himself at once to be the lost Louis Marie, or bide his time
+and break it gently to her.  As if seeking more time for deliberation,
+he asked her another question  "And, my child, what became of your
+father?"
+
+Ah! how little did he dream of the wound he was tearing open.  His
+enquiry was the signal for a new burst of grief from the broken-hearted
+Alvira.  She buried her face in the pillow and wept violently.  She
+remained so for several minutes.  This made Pere Augustin determine
+his course of action.  As he had caused her so much pain, he must now
+console her by letting her know who he is.  Drawing nearer to her, he
+bade her be consoled, for he had some good news to give her; and
+Alvira, after a great effort, raised her head and said:
+
+"It is kind of you father, very kind of you indeed, to take interest
+in my affairs; but perhaps, as you are acquainted with Paris and
+belong to the Society of Jesus, you many know something of my brother.
+Poor Louis Marie!  I should like to know if he is well, and happy,
+and good.  Do tell me, father, if you know anything of him."
+
+"Yes, I do," answered the father quickly.
+
+"Is he alive?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"And happy?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Here!" cried Louis Marie, bursting into tears--"here, within the grasp
+of your hand."
+
+Could joy be greater?  Those two holy souls blended into one.  Like
+Benedict and Scholastica, they wept and smiled together in alternate
+raptures of joy and grief.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXX.
+
+Conclusion.
+
+
+  Now reft of all, faint, feeble, prest with age,
+  We mark her feelings in the last great stage;
+  The feverish hopes, the fears, the cares of life,
+  No more oppress her with torturing strife;
+  The chivalrous spirit of her early day
+  Has passed with beauty and with youth away.
+  As oft the traveller who beholds the sun
+  Sinking before him ere yet his journey's done,
+  Regrets in vain to lose its noontide power,
+  Yet hails the coolness of the evening hour,
+  She feels a holy and divine repose
+  Rest on her spirit in the twilight close;
+  Although her passions ruled in their might,
+  Now vanquished, brighter burns the inward light,
+  Guiding the spirit by its sacred ray
+  To cast its mortal oil and cares away,
+  And list its summons to eternal day.
+
+
+Tossed on a restless ocean, and surviving a long and stormy voyage,
+how the sight of the verdant hills and spires of the nearing port
+must cheer the wearied mariner!  Joy has its sunbeams to light up
+every countenance.  Merry the song that keeps tune with the revolving
+capstan.  Old memories are awakened and dormant affections roused;
+the husband, the father, the exile, each has a train of though laden
+with bright anticipations.  Fancy and hope hasten to wave their magic
+wings over the elated heart, and contribute the balm of ideal charms
+to make even one moment of mortal life a happiness without alloy.
+
+The wearied mariner returning home, quaffing a cup of joy, is a faint
+but truthful simile to represent the pious soul in sight of the port
+of eternal bliss, where loved ones are hailing from afar their welcome
+to the successful mariner from the troubled sea of time.  Life has
+its storms and its calms, its casualties and dangers; it also has the
+bright twilight in the shadow of those eternal hills where existence
+is immortal and joy beatific and unclouded.
+
+Alvira, the heroine of our sketch, is now the faithful soul standing
+on the bark in view of her eternal home.
+
+The consolations promised by her sainted guardian have twice tolled
+the death knell; once more some great joy will strike the last fibre
+of her heart long tuned to spiritual happiness, and will break the
+last chain that imprisons a spirit longing to soar on high.
+
+In the deceptive phases of the consumptive malady she rallied at times;
+she felt stronger--would venture out to the homes of the poor, and
+faint at the alter of Jesus.  In her weakness she did not moderate
+her austerities, save where the express command of her spiritual
+director manifested to her the will of God.  Her little cottage was
+surrounded daily by the poor and sick, who were her friends, and many
+and sincere were the blessings invoked over their benefactress.
+
+Long and interesting were her conversations with her brother Louis.
+Her history as known to herself must have been replete with many
+striking events besides those we have caught up from a scanty tradition
+and a brief pamphlet biography.  How the secrets of her rambles in
+disguise must have brought the smile and the blush to the countenance
+of her simple-minded and sainted brother!
+
+In deep and natural fraternal affection, which is more powerful when
+mellowed by virtue, Pere Augustin saw the hand of death making each
+day new traces on the frame of Alvira.  The hectic flush, the frequent
+faintings, and the cold, icy grasp of her hand told the energy of
+the poison that gnawed at the vital cords.  Sweet and gentle words
+of encouragement ever flowed from his lips.  With eye and finger ever
+turning towards heaven, whither his own soul yearned, he calmed the
+anxious and penitent spirit of Alvira, who still feared her repentance
+was incomplete.
+
+She received Holy Communion every day from the hands of her brother.
+
+What ecstasies of grateful love filled her breast when preparing for
+those blissful moments of union with our Blessed Lord!  Deep and
+eloquent the mysterious breathings of the pure, loving heart.  It has
+a language known and understood only by angels.  As the sun melts the
+rocky iceberg, the coldest heart melts under the loving, burning
+Sun of the most Holy Eucharist.
+
+At length the bark is anchored in the port of rest; Alvira is summoned
+to her crown.
+
+The midnight of July 16, 1717, finds her in her agony; the blest candle
+is lighted; the faithful brother priest is kneeling by her bed; the
+solemn wail of the privileged few of the grateful poor is carried in
+mournful cadence from the chamber of death.
+
+Yet the bell has not tolled the third stroke of consolation.  Could
+she have misunderstood the prophetic voice of her sainted Father
+Francis, who knew the secrets of God in her behalf?  But no; the favor
+will come--the last crowning, ineffable favor will come; it is at hand.
+
+Alvira has opened her eyes.  She calls her brother near; with a smile,
+the sweetest that ever lit up those expressive features, she told him
+what the favor would be.  Father Francis and the Blessed Virgin would
+see her before she should die.
+
+Pere Augustin believes the shock of approaching dissolution has weakened
+her reasoning faculty; he gently chides her, whispers some sweet
+thought of humility, and breathes the holy name that banishes
+temptation.
+
+But, lo! Alvira's features have changed; a glow of ecstatic beauty
+has suffused around her; the light of another land is shed on her
+couch.  Recognition is read on her looks.
+
+Pere Augustin, whose innocence and virtue entitled him to understand
+the privileges of the saints, saw the splendor of a heavenly light
+that filled the room, and heard from Alvira's lips expressions that
+left no doubt on his mind of the promised visit of celestial beings.
+
+The light faded, and from the feeble glare of the candle of death he
+saw the holy spirit of his sister had fled; the sweetness of heavenly
+joy still played on her marble features, and the smile that greeted
+the heavenly visitors still rested on her lips.
+
+Pere Augustin stood over the couch he had bedewed with tears, and
+taking a long and affectionate glance at the hollowed form of his
+repentant sister, turned towards the weeping people; he raised his
+hand towards heaven, and solemnly announced the event that gave a
+festival to the angels.  His voice faltered; he pronounced a short
+and eloquent panegyric--"A saint is dead!"
+
+The tableau is worth remembering; 'tis the last beautiful scene in
+the eventful career of Maria Alvira Cassier!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius, by A. J. O'Reilly
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