jesty sent the order of the Garter to his Faithful of his Britannic Majesty with the same transports, Majesty, on his Faithful Majesty most heroically without any object of ambition or aggrandisement, breaking the oath he had taken to his subjects; and with a pure ardour for the holy religion and and just as freely and lovingly as his Majesty the for legitimacy, their Majesties, the Catholic and Emperor Alexander, autocrat of all the Russias, the Faithful, have ordered their ministers-plenidid also send the order of St. George, to invest potentiary to arrange the business with the therewith his most Christian Majesty the King of ministers of his Britannic Majesty, and have France and Navarre, on his most Christian Ma- appointed each his general (of the Capuchins) to jesty retracting and annulling the principal articles superintend the debarkation of the heretics from of the Charter he had unadvisedly given to his the kingdom of Ireland, in two commodious ships, subjects. Which high-minded and glorious actions, supplied to his Catholic Majesty by his Majesty and the honours paid to them, clearly prove that the Emperor of all the Russias, the bottoms of no faith is to be kept any more with subjects than which ships have been provisionally caulked with heretics; it being laid down as incontro- where the timber is rotten, and the whole pecuvertible, that kings are answerable to God alone liarly adapted to the service for which they are for their actions; and that their actions proceed appointed." from their thoughts; and that their thoughts are instilled into them, as occasion may require, by means of the holy unction at their coronation. If stars and crosses are out of fashion, or become too ordinary with his Britannic Majesty, their Majesties, the Catholic and Faithful, will institute each a more magnificent order; and, as the Garter is preoccupied, the decoration shall be stay or petticoat, at the suggestion of his Britannic Majesty; and his Britannic Majesty shall be the first invested therewith." John-Mary. I am ready. But I do not see plainly how we can pay such a body of troops as your Majesty was inclined to send over. Ferdinand. I did not read a word about the payment that is provided for: the other means are at hand. John-Mary. The business is complex. Ferdinand. It would be no state-paper else. Good state-papers can no more be smooth and even, and seen in all points at once, than good fortifications can. I will read, for your satisfaction, one of the supplementary articles. "His Britannic Majesty is required to furnish nothing more toward the expedition here amicably proposed, than transports, uniforms, shoes, forage, and pay; which his Britannic Majesty can not but consider as moderate, when so desirable an object is to be accomplished. That it is eminently so, it is unnecessary to point out to his Majesty, his minister, the Lord of Liverpool, having prepared the minds of his Majesty's loyal and loving subjects for the same, in his declaration before Parliament, that 'the troops of his most Christian Majesty, on their entrance into Spain, were universally hailed as deliverers by all conditions of people, and with transports of enthusiastic joy."* Desirous of blessing the loyal and loving subjects * Either Lord Liverpool deceived the parliament by a falsehood, now universally notorious, or the person he employed in Spain deceived him. The greater part of the nobility were contented with the established order of things; all the commercial, all the agricultural, and, with hardly an exception, all the literary, Assassins, smugglers, monks, and canons of cathedrals, opposed it. In twenty days, more excesses, more robberies, arsons, and murders, were committed in Arragon alone, than had been committed John-Mary. That is humane; one could not do less. But I fancied that the minister of his Britannic Majesty was permitted by the Holy Alliance to speak unfavourably of the crusade against the Constitutionalists. Ferdinand. It has been agreed on, at the courts of the Holy Alliance, that no offence shall be taken if one minister talks in the House of Commons and at taverns like a liberal (it being well understood that he is no more of one than I am), provided that the other shall cry down whatever is constitutional. By these means the popular party is thrown off its guard, and hopes grow up luxuriantly on both sides. Your Majesty is to consider these two men (such are the words of the Russian minister to me), as the hot-water and coldwater ducts of that grand vapour-bath which is to cure all the maladies of kings and nations. John-Mary. I am truly happy that your Majesty has given me this explanation: I should otherwise have thought them two most impudent impostors. Fortunate, I ought rather to say providential is it, that the constitutions are thrown down on the continent of Europe, and that only the form remains in England: yet even the form after a time draws to it and attaches its partizans: as men who have been accustomed to a scolding wife, are just as sorrowful in their widowhood as others, and when they marry a second time, if they happen to light upon a quiet one, think themselves almost widowers still. Stories have been related to me of American tribes, which, although they were ready to believe anything, as they said, yet wept over their ugly idols, and could hardly be brought to look at Saint Agnes and Saint Clara. Who knows whether the king of England himself may not have some such weakness! For, O my brother and cousin! we kings at last are but men; little wiser than others. I would pray to heaven for his conversion to the Catholic faith, without which no good doctrine of any kind can take root and flourish in him. The force of habit and the force of holiness are well illustrated in the history I shall now relate. Hurtado Palmaseda dos Rios Amargos, archbishop of Evora, always wore a hair-shirt, to the in the whole of Spain during all the years of constitutional great edification and delight of his diocesans. He government. | had performed so many acts of piety, that at last his niece, Donna Sofonisba Debora de Castelmor, | lightness and incredulity to the bed. He lowered and a young gentlewoman who kept her company, his head indifferently, as if it hung loosely on his Donna Tanaquil Elisa de Leite, attempted to per- neck; and throwing it up wildly, like a horse suade him that it no longer was necessary to his that one would halter, cried aloud; I dare salvation. Sometimes, to pacify them, he offered hardly repeat the words; "The ... smells of one excuse, sometimes another; such as, "it is sandal-wood." cool;" "it is warm;" "his soul required it;""it held fewer fleas than cambric, and did not stick to the skin." In fact, such is the loving-kindness of God and of the blessed Virgin, it really and truly had grown pleasant to him. Ferdinand. I should like to hear the end of such a saint. Has your Majesty any small relic of him or his shirt? John-Mary. A something of both but to proceed. He died in the odour of sanctity. Many thought his smell was like a white lily's; many said it had more of the tuberose; and there was one who remarked that, in his mind, rather than tuberose or lily, it resembled in fragrance a certain flower in the Island of Japan. As he was a tailor, and had never been a mile out of the city since the hour he was begotten, it was asked of him how he knew anything about the smell of Japanese flowers. He answered that he had read of it: which, as he was a sedentary man, was weighty, if not convincing. Another said that there was no difference whatever between it and the rose of Sharon, a plant of which he had seen formerly in a garden near Valencia, a town belonging to your Majesty; but his brother corrected him, saying, "Lope, it is indeed very like that rose which I remember you once described to me; yet, if you had ever been at Lebanon, as I have, you would have altered your mind, and have declared that such fragrance as this could come only from the wings of angels, who had settled on the cedars of Lebanon." Nevertheless there were many of the townsmen, who, in punishment of their worldly. mindedness and curiosity, could smell nothing more than what they were accustomed to smell in their own habiliments when they threw them off on the Sunday morning. Not lily nor rose nor cedar came distinctly forth: nor could they certify to their consciences aught concerning the said Japanese flower. Toward night, when the room was most crowded, doubts were entertained by some persons in tolerable repute, whether there was any miraculous scent at all. Nay, it is recorded that some of the clergy leaned over the body and smelt it with all their might, and went away saying nothing. It pleased God that the instrument of conversion to thousands should be the very worst man among them, namely, Tiberio-Maria Somaro. He had been a soldier in Manilla, and had been seen to leer and wink and lift up his shoulder like an unbeliever, with some other most irreverent and indecent marks of contempt. An aged priest, the last who in his devotion leant over the body, beheld him with compassion, and taking him gently by the shirt-sleeve (for the weather was hot and he came without his coat) led him in his It was the will of our blessed Lady that the odour should be such as she vouchsafes to grow exclusively in the east, her native country. Out of the mouth of a vile profane wretch was she pleased to bring conviction. Ferdinand. If there is no harm in saying it, by her leave, methinks she chose in her wisdom odd words as well as an odd instrument. John-Mary. The miracle is the greater; nor did it end here. Ferdinand. For the love of our Lord, my dear brother and cousin, let me hear the rest of it. John-Mary. Faith! after what your Majesty has been reading, a miracle comes like a fine fresh oyster after a peppery ragoût. Although the Lord and his saints had given the good archbishop strength and courage to endure the hair-shirt while he was in health, and even to solace his friends with the assurance that, as a sinner, it was preferable, in the ease it gave his spirit, to one of linen; yet the skin grows irritable in sickness, which came upon him unexpectedly, confined him to his bed instantly, and carried him off after two days. Ferdinand. He might have changed it without sin. John-Mary. Ah poor man! he did not. He was seen indeed when death was inevitable and imminent, which at the beginning he had no sus picion of, to attempt to change it; but he would accept no assistance from anyone. He could not accomplish his attempt: no attendant touched him: yet the shirt was changed! Ferdinand. Mater amabilis kyrie eleison! kyrie amabilis! mater eleison! John-Mary. My brother and cousin, if I could sing like your Majesty, I would join you. Ferdinand. I am in a fine frame of mind! My flesh creeps; my skin tightens on the crown of my head like a drum in the north wind on the prado. Manifest to me, I pray you, my brother and cousin, the further mercies of the heavenly choir. We must however be upon our guard against false miracles: holy church (vehement against imposture) teaches us that. John-Mary. Here was no possibility of inposture. Ferdinand. Certainly there could be none: but was the cause tried at Rome? John-Mary. Regularly; and when the passions of men had cooled, as usual. Ferdinand. How many years had elapsed? John-Mary. The ordinary number: about sixty. The church is never precipitate. I have read the whole process, with the signature of eight witnesses, some of whom declare that they never saw the others until they met in the bed-chamber of the archbishop. I have seldom read such irrefra gable proofs he tried to strip himself: he | greatest enemies told me a thing of them which could not the chaste man would accept (as I told your Majesty) no assistance to take off his shirt, not even from Donna Sofonisba, his niece, nor from Donna Tanaquil whom he had educated from eleven years of age. The room was full of attendants, clerical, medical, familiar. Ferdinand. In the presence of so many persons, he need not have been so scrupulously shy and modest as to deny the young ladies the service of stripping him as well might our queens object to the presence of archbishop, chancellor, captain of the guard, and six or seven other hidalgos, while they are being delivered of infante or infanta. fixes my determination: it sums up that a Jesuit is worth two other men, even of the best. When it was objected against them that they professed the strict propriety of lying whenever it suited their purposes, he replied, that among other people two negatives make an affirmative, but that among the Jesuits one does. Now what higher praise can be given them? and this from the mouth of an adversary! I do not approve of lying, and never lie at all, unless in matters of state and conscience. John-Mary. If your Majesty will inform me in your goodness, at what time the disciples of Saint John-Mary. Such was the mercy of God and of Ignatius take possession of Spain again, I shall his mother the blessed Virgin, that, although they receive the intelligence most gratefully. Ever knew and decreed that he must die soon, and saw afterward shall I eat only eggs in the shell, drink that his struggles to change his shirt had exhausted only water from the spring, and neither take snuff him, and aware that, if indeed he ever had felt nor wear gloves. What they are as theologians, the hair scratch and plague him, it could no longer Mother Church alone can decide; they certainly do it, nevertheless in mercy to the holy man and are deep physicians both in minerals and simples, for the increase of their glory, they allowed him and save a great deal of bed-making. They are still his hair-shirt. But the hair was like the such casters of nativity and such prognosticators goat's of Angola, softer than silk or satin, and of futurity, they can calculate without book to lighter. what extent a man shall be griped and cuckolled, Ferdinand. Gloria Deo in excelsis! Ad aquas and at what hour and into what house the holy Babylonis ! John-Mary. On first reading these facts and the testimonials, I ordered the double miracle to be embroidered in letters of gold, to be inserted in a finely carved frame from Paris, with a rich hanging of damask behind it, and a stout plateglass before (lest it should be frayed or soiled by the beards of the faithful who might kiss it), and a noble wax-candle on each side, burning day and night. Ferdinand. On the compliance of his Britannic Majesty with our wishes, as suggested and manifested to us by their Majesties of the Holy Alliance, I myself will be at the expense of a copy, in like letters, frame, and hangings, to be suspended as his Majesty may deem fit, in his chapel, bedroom, or council-chamber. John Mary. And I, for my part, on condition that he becomes a good Catholic, and brings over the lost people of England to the true faith, do promise and stipulate upon my royal word, to give a fair fifth of the miraculous shirt immediately, and a fair tenth of the cilice, or of such portion thereof as by the mercy of God shall at any future time be discovered upon earth. sacrament shall be carried before 'em. Ferdinand. I wonder how the devil they do it. John-Mary. I wonder how kings will let it be done; so many people are frightened, particularly the women. Ferdinand. They will never be quiet, unless we give them their own way. John-Mary. Will they then? Ferdinand. They say they will. They speak humbly and reverentially, and always begin with Your Majesty,' and 'Your Catholic Majesty.' John-Mary. I wish they may end there. Keep them in their posture of humility, and they can do little harm: let them once rise up from it, and they will be avenged for having ever been in it. So say those who know them. When you expose their tricks and make them refund their robberies, they cry, "The Church is in tribulation:" when they have tied your hands behind you, and scourged you, and eaten your dinner, and emptied your snuff-box, and made your wife and children disavow you, and your people threaten your throat, then forsooth "The Church is triumphant." For, these rogues are not Matthew nor Mark, nor Barnabas nor Jude, nor James nor Thomas nor Apollos, Ferdinand. Is it expected that part of it may nor Simon nor Saul nor Peter, but "church, be found again? John-Mary. The doctors of my universities have not yet decided whether it be the subject of transubstantiation or assumption. Ferdinand. A most delicate and momentous point, nor hastily to be decided. Has the holy father been consulted upon it? John-Mary. My bishops would reserve the initiative to themselves, subject however to his infallible decree. Ferdinand. They have not wit enough: I am resolved to recall the Jesuits. One of their mother church, holy church," and are identified and indivisible as potted lobsters.* *The power of the clergy, under another Bourbon now reigning, may in part be estimated by the following extract from the sentence of a royal court on the Bishop of Nancy: "The royal court of Nancy decrees, that the passages of the Mandamus constitute the crime specified in the 201st and 204th articles of the Penal Code: that the Mandamus alone is sufficient to prove the culpability of the bishop: but, taking into consideration the high functions of the Bishop of Nancy, the court declares that for the present there is no ground to proceed." FF Ferdinand. Take care! take care! Is there remainder of his dress, on his surrendering the nothing behind those pictures? John-Mary. Walls; and walls there shall always be, and many too, between me and Jesuits. Ferdinand. My cousin Charles of France says I must have 'em. He tells me they make the most comfortable creatures for confessors. If you say you have done this or that, they say they have done it too; by God's providence; in order to comfort you; and if the sin requires a scourging, they will invent such a pleasant way of doing it, you would give a crusado to be scourged again. Beside, my cousin tells me that he hopes his daughter of Angoulême will bless his kingdom with an heir to the throne, by the intercession of these holy fathers: and who knows but they may do the like by me? My cousin says, "Had they come earlier, France would have been happy." The other confraternities did their best, and failed. There may indeed be a reason for that, in the horrible atheism of a constitutional bishop, who, when the royal ordinance was issued for illuminating nine saints in Notre Dame, in order to obtain so great a blessing, said peevishly and profanely, "These things are not to be done with candles'-ends." John-Mary. Oh! there he was wrong! there he betrayed his want of faith and discernment. But I have heard it argued that the exactions and immorality of the clergy are among the principal causes of disturbances and revolutions. Ferdinand. Never believe it. Atheists would decoy you into such persuasion, that they themselves might preach and say masses and possess tithes. John-Mary. Who knows whether they have not succeeded in some places, looking just like the worthiest rectors and jolliest monks in Christendom? veil of Donna Imaculata, which in his hurry he had mistaken for a part of it; though a monk's shirt is seldom so black as that. John-Mary. Perhaps Frey Lope's was one of a dun camel's hair. Ferdinand. Nothing more likely. I wonder he did not say it but he wanted no superfluity of arguments or facts: he had better things at hand. It was Saturday evening. "I will confound them in their malice and iniquity," said he to the hostess, who was assisting him in several small arrangements when the intruders had left the posada. Accordingly, the next morning he mounted the pulpit, and delivered a discourse on the principles of immorality and infidelity, deriving them from Satan, and │ tracing them, without once missing their progress, into the lodges of the free-masons, and the conventicles of the quakers. John Mary, Quakers! quakers! who are they, brother! Ferdinand. Wicked men, that the devil makes quake eternally, but can not force to take their hats off: they eat and sleep and say their prayers in 'em. John-Mary. God then, without a question, turns his back upon them: for nobody can bear that rudeness. But Frey Lope. . how fared he? Ferdinand. "I do not deny," said he, "that the devil led me yesterday into what you carnal men may properly call temptation. Why did he? To the confusion and conversion of sinners; for the saints, the confessors, and martyrs, make him work for them, even on festivals, like a turnspit. Now suppose the mortal sin had been committed, to which every man (not under especial grace) is liable, they would intercede and give their suffrages for the sinner, on his confession. By which Ferdinand. Here and there one may have crept dispensation, for one bad thing there are two good into the fold, and carried his books with him: ones; confession here, and in heaven the offering but true priests must be better people than any of those suffrages. We who take upon ourselves other, else they could not have received the grace the offences of the people, are no better than the of God to preach his word to the rest and true people while we are sinning; but while we repeat monks are better still, for they have performed the words of life in the mass, and God is created more miracles, and have performed them too at at our voice in the midst of them, we no longer the very time when the profane and ignorant are children of the world, but children of would fain have proved them to be the most un-righteousness. He who commits sins is one; he worthy; thus returning good for evil, blessings who remits them is another. Look at this time for revilings. piece!" Frey Lope de Hornaches was circumvented by his enemies, while he suffered himself, like a lamb, to be conducted to a garden-house by Donna Imaculata Floz de Cabeça: places which your Majesty must know perfectly, as they lie upon the frontier of Alentejo. The enemies, who, your Majesty may suppose from their promptitude, were anciently of some guerilla, caught him inopportunely (as they vainly thought) and led him off (so they scornfully boasted) more lightly accoutred than even partisan-war and vintage-season make requisite, through the long street of Cabeça, into the posada called the 'Star of Bethlehem.' Here however they had the humanity to give him the Here he produced one, given to him by an abbess of Merida for sundry works performed on pressing occasions in her convent, he possessing the science of discussing and removing some of the most malignant complaints, more speedily than the oldest physician, and being always on the spot in spring and fall. "This time-piece," he proceeded, "may be inexact by an hour, by two hours, by three hours, in the twenty-four: yet I call it regular." He paused. "Christians!" added he, "I am rejoiced to observe your humble spirit and pious attention. My words, I doubt not, are strange to your ears: J so are many things at first which afterward are evident and conspicuous. Now this time-piece, although its movements in the sum of their day's duration may be amiss, yet if any of you should be guided by it from hour to hour, whether for labour or rest, he would find that one of them is as long as another: the proportions it marks are then equal and just. So, although a friar or priest shall be inaccurate in his conduct, which either from human infirmity or for some inscrutable purpose may happen, yet that part of it whereat it is your business to look, is right enough. If the devil take him aside to tempt him, you have no concern at this juncture with him or the devil; wait patiently till he comes back again, and then mind what he has authority to say." John-Mary. My brother! you have surely repeated the whole sermon. What memory! what genius! Ferdinand. I had three thousand days' indulgence for learning it; and it cost me but a fortnight. Frey Lope quite confounded the heretical and evil-minded. He hath since proved his innocence, to the satisfaction of the most scrupulous and hard-hearted, by fifty-nine signatures, attesting, on the experience of the subscribers, that the veil of Donna Imaculata has acquired the miraculous virtue of curing weak eyes. John-Mary. Hearing at first of the veil, I trembled to think how Frey Lope would come off. Gloria patri! Ferdinand. To abash his accusers and turn round upon his persecutors, he has published the whole sermon, whereto is prefixed the title-page of "Truth unveiled, or the Cross erected in Cabeça." It has been presented to me upon a white satin cushion fringed with silver, preceded by the superior of his order, who informed me that no remarks were made after the delivery, but such as, an age, among prophets and debtors, casting an angry glance at the Visconde Anadia, who confessed to me that he had owed him for some time forty pesos dueros. Ferdinand. My brother! many contraband things may be conveyed into my dominions through your Majesty's frontier; among them are books. Irreligious ones of the first order, such as Cyclopedias, Natural Histories, Bibles, and Treatises against the Jesuits, are strictly watched in the territories of Portugal; but latterly there have been others edited of very evil tendency, ridiculing or reviling the functions and characters of princes. John-Mary. The Jesuits did that. John-Mary. We have proofs. Ferdinand. They disdain proofs, and manfully reject them. John-Mary. The words are plain. Ferdinand. So they may appear: they are typical. John-Mary. What is typical? Ferdinand. Typical is. . wait a moment . . typical is. . they told me but yesterday.. No! typical is having two or more senses. John-Mary. Brother! brother! they will not let us have any. Ferdinand. O yes they will only allow them their own way. They can not act conveniently with others: the horse and ox, they inform me, are not made for the same traces. John-Mary. I smell poison and gunpowder under their frocks. Ferdinand. I smell very different things. Happy those that take protection there! They know what books are, and write enough for the whole world. We have taken more than fifty French, English, American, Dutch, Swiss, and other publications, in which I am mentioned as a tyrant, a bigot, a fool, an ingrate, a swindler, a liar, a perjurer. So far was fortunate: but what will you say about my fortune, when I tell your Majesty that I was "The lady abbess knew what she was about, obliged to hang the valuable servant who diswhen she gave Frey Lope that watch!" "The saintly woman had her finger upon the index; she foresaw that Frey Lope would make a flaming sword of it." "The black veil and bright eyes for ever!" "Long life to Frey Lope, with his Truth unveiled, and his Cross erected in Cabeça!” covered and denounced them? John-Mary. Could that have been lately? I thought your Majesty had long ago hanged every one such. Ferdinand. I believe he was the last of the kind; but I could not do less. When he had found these offensive words against me in every book he "Death to the negroes, traitors to our king and opened, and was still prying more and more, my Frey Lope!" I was offended at finding my royal name united with a subject's, until the superior informed me that the words Frey Lope did not actually mean Frey Lope, but religion, which has always in good times been identified with the monastic orders. John-Mary. That is true, and very profound: in matters of religion we always say one thing and mean another. This I heard with my own ears at Quebuz, in a most unctuous sermon preached by the deacon Joam Salter, who exemplified it by saying that a day signified a year, and sometimes confessor said it was enough, and asked him why he was not contented with what he had found already, as the other publications had nothing to do with politics or religion. "Father!" answered he, "here are some sixty, in various languages, written in various tempers, by men of various religions and various political opinions, yet all say the same thing of our gracious lord Don Ferdinand. If now I could find a single volume that speaks about him differently, I have only to lay it up, and the fortune of my children is made, twenty years hence, as possessors of the rarest |
