This title will prove a disappointment to those who only associate the idea of a French novel with that typical production of vicious and feverish literature to which the fiction-mongers of France have so long accustomed us, and whose corrupt influence has made itself felt far beyond the limits of the nation which gives it birth. Our present purpose is not to discuss one of those pernicious books, but to consider one which rises as far above their level by its artistic beauty and literary merits as by the nobler tone of its morality. A novel by a Catholic writer, impregnated from first to last with the spirit and principle of the faith, full of noble sentiments, and yet as amusing and as exciting as any “naughty” novel; a book where all the good people, even the holy people, are as charming, witty, odd, or fascinating as if they were anything but holy; a book that conveys in the characters and scenes it brings before us a great moral lesson, and which at the same time absorbs and excites us as powerfully as the cleverest novel of the sensational school, with its inevitable murders and forgeries and double marriages—the appearance of a novel such as this is surely an event that it behoves us to examine closely as the curious literary phenomenon which it is.
Mrs. Augustus Craven’s last work, Le Mot de l’Enigme, which, under the title of The Veil Withdrawn, appeared in The Catholic World simultaneously with its issue in the Correspondant of Paris, is known to most of the readers of the present article, but we would ask them if, when enjoying its persual, they have sometimes stopped to consider what a genuine achievement the book was, and how pregnant with promise for the lighter Catholic literature of the future? Any book by the author of the Récit d’une Sœur is sure to command a wide audience in Europe and America among readers of different languages and creeds; but there are reasons why The Veil Withdrawn should meet with a specially triumphant welcome from us Catholics, for it is in truth a triumph over prejudices whose narrow and tyrannical rule have hitherto been fatal to Catholic fiction. The Récit d’une Sœur, the peerless story that stands unrivalled amidst the literature of the world, taught many lessons to our day, but no one, perhaps, more important, considering its possible results, than that which it conveyed to Catholic writers—namely, that religion, in its most ardent form and its most rigid application, is compatible with the tenderest romance; that human hearts and imaginations, far from being chilled or fettered by the sublime truths of the faith, are kindled and enlarged by their influence; that human passions come into play as powerfully in souls ruled by the divine law as in those that reject and defy it, the only difference being that to the former they are weapons used in noble warfare, servants and auxiliaries, whereas to the others they are tyrants that strike only to destroy. The loves of Alexandrine and Albert revealed this secret to the world, and this alone would have sufficed to immortalize the Récit. No romance ever reached the skyey heights to which these lovers soared; and yet, while their hearts sang their sweet love-song together, their souls were fixed on God, dreaming of heaven, where their love was to find its perfect consummation, scorning the pitiful meed of earthly happiness, unless it might lead them to the secure possession of the eternal bliss of which this was but the transient foretaste. “Pour la vie, c’est trop court!”[70] was Alexandrine’s reply when Albert asked her for the ring on which the words were graven, Pour la vie! And such should be the motto of all love worthy of the name.
This pure key-note is struck and sustained with a master-hand throughout the whole story of The Veil Withdrawn, and the success with which the principle it enunciates has been forced into the service of art is the point which we would invite Catholic writers in all countries to consider attentively. Our grand mistake, as a rule, is to assume that Catholic literature, in order to be true to its mission, must be constantly talking of holy things, bringing forward pious maxims and practices; that the heroes and heroines of its stories must be pious people, or else very wicked people whose final cause is the glorification of the pious ones who are to convert them; it must never deal openly with the great problems of life, never grapple with its deepest mysteries, never describe men and women as they ordinarily exist around us—human beings endowed at their birth with the fatal inheritance of Adam, with mighty capabilities for good and evil, with passions and instincts that have to work out their issue to ruin or to endless victory; souls where all the forces are clashing in deadly and desperate strife—these things are forbidden ground to the Catholic novelist. He may tread timidly on the outskirts of the battle-field, but he must not venture into the thick of the fight; he must not lift the veil and let us look upon the scene where this momentous combat is going forward, where nature and grace and all the allied enemies of the human heart are wrestling and striving in fierce war. These things would not be “edifying”; they would not be fit reading for young girls; they might put ideas into their heads and excite their imaginations. And why, we ask, is it invariably taken for granted that Catholic writers only write for young girls? Are there no Catholic men in the world? It might be urged, with better show of reason, that young girls are not obliged to read novels at all—stories, yes; but novels do not form any necessary part of their education. These are intended for men and women—people who have found out the “answer to the riddle,” learned some of the dark and painful lessons of life; who turn to the pages of a novel to find an hour’s harmless recreation, if nothing more, and to forget the dull round of care and vexing realities in the amusement or excitement of imaginary troubles and joys. We are far from saying that the novel has no higher purpose than this; but if it claimed no other, this, in itself, is a legitimate one. Human nature must have relaxation. The most ascetic saints sought recreation of some kind from the strain of work and contemplation. Still more must ordinary mortals seek it; and as novel-reading has become one of the easiest and most popular forms of mental diversion, it is of the highest importance that it should be of good and wholesome quality. Now, a novel is neither good nor wholesome when it ignores the canons of art, and eschews the true study of human nature, and confines itself to pretty commonplaces and pious allusions and exemplary sentiments exchanged between namby-pamby people who are represented as in a state of society which, practically, has no prototype in real life, where strong passions and conflicting interests and fierce temptations have no existence, but where all difficulties are adjusted by a pious suggestion offered at the right moment by a friend or a book. Grown-up men and women will not be put off with this sort of thing, be they ever such good Catholics; when they take up a novel, they do so for interest or amusement, and, for lack of better, they fall back on the real novels, sensational or otherwise.
This is a lamentable state of things, and as fatal to Catholic writers as to their readers. It is this false idea of the character and requirements of Catholic literature which has brought it to the low ebb at which it now is among English-speaking Catholics, in spite of the growing numbers of a cultivated and intelligent audience. Every one recognizes the fact, and many deplore it, but no one has the courage to attempt the remedy. It would require, indeed, something more than any effort of individual influence to break down the prejudices and puerile traditions that fence in the authorized field of Catholic fiction in the present day, and it is difficult to say which calls for strongest denunciation—the prohibition which excludes certain subjects, or the large license given to the use of others. The Catholic novelist is forbidden to strike the deep, vibrating chords of nature and of souls, but he believes himself free to handle the most sacred subjects, to preach and moralize to the top of his bent. It is hard to speak of this folly as dispassionately as we should wish; but looking at it with all possible indulgence, is there not something in the stupid conceit and self-complacent audacity of it that may justly rouse indignation? We see grave men, who have graduated in the schools, give up long years to the study of sacred science, in order that they may some day be competent to speak worthily on these high themes, that they may learn how to balance the relations of right and wrong, and define the limits of temptation and sin, of cause and effect; and when, with knowledge ripened by study and meditation, they venture to write, it is in a spirit of great reverence and in fear and trembling. On the other hand, we see incompetent laymen, young ladies and young gentlemen fresh from school, utterly inexperienced, but well supplied with the boldness of inexperience and incompetence, dipping a dainty pen into a silver inkstand and proceeding to discourse in a novel of pious subjects—of prayer, and temptation, and sacraments, and priests and the priestly character, and controversial subjects—as flippantly as they might discuss the merits of a new opera or a new costume. And they fancy, forsooth, that this is doing good and giving edification! They imagine that it is enough to mention sacred subjects and emit pious or quasi-pious sentiments in order to reach the human heart and strike the sursum corda on its springs! One could afford to laugh at the silly delusion, if the danger did not lie so close to the folly of it. A moment’s reflection and a little humility would suffice to convince these well-meaning persons of their mistake. Many of them might really attain their end of edifying if they had only the sense to confine themselves within the range of their powers. If a beginner, or one endowed with a delicate sense of music but limited musical ability, should attempt to perform one of Beethoven’s glorious sonatas, he would only irritate us by spoiling the masterpiece; but if the same person wisely contented himself with playing some simple air, he might afford genuine and unalloyed pleasure, touching some chord of feeling in the listener’s heart, evoking, mayhap, sweet memories of childhood, sacred and long forgotten. Few things provoke the disgust of an intelligent reader, pious or not, more than to come upon religious platitudes in a book ostensibly written to amuse; and the prospect of meeting with this kind of thing at every page is sufficient to prejudice him against a book which bears a Catholic name on the title-page. Even the name of a Catholic publisher brands it at first sight as “dull and silly.” Here, as elsewhere, the cause and effect react upon each other, and the puerile tone and absence of artistic treatment in the author, by failing to gain the favor and attention of the public, paralyzes the most energetic efforts of Catholic publishers, and those few Catholic writers who can command a wider audience are unavoidably driven to the Protestant publishers in order to secure a hearing.
Is it too much to say that a Catholic novelist who would successfully break through these narrow-minded and false theories, and courageously inaugurate a new reign in Catholic fiction, would be conferring a great benefit on our generation? We claim for Mrs. Augustus Craven the merit of having achieved this feat. The mission which she began in the Récit d’une Sœur was successfully continued in Fleurange, and may be said to triumph completely in The Veil Withdrawn. Her last novel is a book which appeals as strongly to the interest of the unbeliever and the heretic as of the most fervent Catholic. The moral lesson it conveys may be accepted or not, just as the reader pleases; it is there, brilliantly and powerfully delivered; but, like so many messages broadly written on the face of nature or faintly whispered to our hearts, we may hearken or we may close our ears to it, as we choose; the story still remains one of enthralling interest, full of tenderest romance, of fiery passion, of picturesque description, of sparkling repartee, of gay and pathetic and thrilling situations. With the skill of a real artist the author lifts the curtain and bids us look into the hearts of our fellow-creatures; she touches the hidden springs, reveals the dubious motives, evil sometimes blending with good so closely that it requires the finest analysis to discern their true proportions, to decompose the elements, and show where and how far each in turn prevails.
The two characters who stand out from the canvas as the leading figures in the picture are brought face to face in the most terrible conflict that human hearts can know. Ginevra—not a child, not a placid convent maiden suspecting no life beyond her “narrowing nunnery walls,” but a woman with a strong, impassioned soul—is first inebriated with the pure wine of permitted happiness; the cup is dashed from her, and she tries to clutch it in defiance and despair. It eludes her still. She beholds her happiness wrecked, her life blighted, at the very outset. She does not take her rosary, and, with conventional propriety, accept the ruin of her young life with the resigned spirit and smiling countenance of a saint; far from it. The evil that is in her starts into activity and makes a fierce fight against her cruel lot. She plunges into the whirl of society, and tries to drown her misery in such consolations as excitement and gratified vanity can give. We follow her step by step in the perilous career, now trembling at her rashness, now rejoicing at her escape, but never, in the bottom of our hearts, believing that she will prove unworthy of her nobler self.
Let us glance over the story, not to analyze its merits as a work of high art and moral philosophy, but simply to review it in the light of a novel characteristic of our times and full of the stir of nineteenth-century life.
It opens at Messina, in an old palazzo, where Ginevra, blossoming out in her fifteenth summer, sits watching the sea through the half-closed window, listening to the wave sobbing on the beach, unconscious and dreamy, but already vibrating to the “low music of humanity” that stirs the unwakened pulses of her heart. She rivets our attention at the first glance as a creature whose beauty, sensitiveness, and dormant energy of character contain all the elements of some high romance. The description of her home and its inmates forms a charming and animated picture. Fabrizio, the learned and somewhat austere father; Bianca, the mother, with her tenderly brooding love; Livia, the sister, at first so misjudged, but destined to rise to such prestige amidst them all; Ottavia, the fussy, superstitious, devoted old nurse; Mario, the sombre and jealous-tempered brother—they all come before us with the reality of living characters whom we love, fear, or suspect as they gradually reveal themselves. The episode of the flower flung from the window in a moment of frolic and girlish vanity, and which leaves so deep a mark on Ginevra’s life, is cleverly introduced and prepares us for the retribution which awaits the poor child’s innocent misdemeanor. Her life glides on peacefully in the old frescoed saloon, where she cons her book and tends her nightingales, until one day, while high perched on a stool, ministering to her singing bird, the old majordomo flings the door wide open and in a sonorous voice announces Sua eccellenza il Duca di Valenzano! Ginevra starts, and so does the reader; for he knows instinctively that this visitor is the fairy prince of the story, destined to make the golden-haired maiden supremely happy or supremely miserable. Ginevra’s confusion, at being discovered by this illustrious intruder in such an awkward attitude and so childishly engaged, is charmingly described. She knows not whether to be terrified or delighted when the handsome duke goes forward and assists her to descend from her aerial standpoint. But old Don Fabrizio knows what to feel about it, and surveys the group in the embrasure of the window with a glance of stern displeasure. This high-born client of his has nothing in common with Don Fabrizio’s daughter, and it is with undisguised reluctance that the proud lawyer obeys the duke’s request to introduce him to the signorina.
And now the story is fairly afloat, and we follow it with an interest that grows in proportion as the plot advances, rising in dramatic power at every chapter. We know that Valenzano is not to be trusted, that he has in him all the elements of a faithless lover and a cruel husband; but we surrender ourselves all the same to the charm of his manner, his genius, his irresistible fascinations. The love-making is as warm as the author dares to make it in a country where the freedom of Anglo-Saxon courtship is unknown, and where the course of true love runs smoothly between the contracting families on one side and the family lawyers on the other. Ginevra goes forth to her new life with a mixture of delight and fear that are like the foreshadowing of the flickered destiny that awaits her, and Livia’s voice strikes like a note of painful warning in the concert of the family joy and triumph and congratulation, when she reminds Ginevra that “marriage is like death”—a thing that we wait and watch for, but never know until we have passed the gates and it is too late to turn back. The description of the bridal festivities, when she goes home to her husband’s palace, and, worn out by the grandeur and the glare, takes refuge alone in the quiet starlight, and removes the circlet of glittering jewels from her brow, that cannot bear the pressure any longer, presents one of those pictures of life in the great Italian world that Mrs. Craven excels in depicting.
Life has now become like an enchanted dream to Ginevra. But the first touch of the awakening reality is not long delayed. One night, when the moon was high in the blue heavens and flooding earth and sea with a mystic glory, Ginevra and Lorenzo were sitting on the terrace, listening to the water lapping on the shore, to the nightingales trilling in the ilex groves; the young wife, hushed into silence by the ecstatic beauty of the scene, laid her hand upon her husband’s arm and whispered to him, “Let us lift up our hearts in prayer for one moment, and give thanks for all this beauty.” Lorenzo bent on her a look of tenderest love, and then murmured with a smile, as if answering the poetic folly of a child,
“‘Beatrice in suso, ed io in lei guardava.’[71]
Thine eyes are my heaven, Ginevra. I feel no need to raise my own any higher.” A cold chill like the first suspicion of a great sorrow crept over the young wife. But Lorenzo quickly chased it away, and she tries to banish the memory of it. But we do not forget it. Slight as the incident is, it has all the import of the first growl of the distant thunder, the small patch of cloud, “no bigger than a man’s hand,” upon the summer sky, that are the certain forerunners of the storm.
But the storm will not burst just yet, and meantime we follow Ginevra in her brilliant career, first travelling here and there with her husband, and finally enthroned as a queen in her delightful world at Naples. The first thing that makes us tremble for her is Lorenzo’s startled exclamation of anger—was it?—when he comes upon Donna Faustina’s card amongst those that are left at the young duchess’ door, and the latter, in surprise, asks what it means. He turns it off adroitly, and Ginevra dismisses it from her mind. The interval that follows is bright with incident and pictures of society in Naples and in Paris. We see Lorenzo at work in his studio, where Ginevra sits to him as a model for his Vestal, and where his rapturous admiration of her beauty makes her recoil instinctively as from a homage unworthy of her, too much “of the earth earthly.” And yet this husband, who is almost an unbeliever, who smiles with indulgent fondness on his wife’s ardent piety, is glad enough that she should have religion to guard her from the perils that beset her on all sides; he recognizes the power and utility of her faith, and is careful not to shock it or to let her see how little he really shares it. Lando, the cousin and boon companion of the duke, now comes upon the scene, and for a time we side with Ginevra in her dislike and suspicion of him; but soon we find out our mistake, and acknowledge that, in spite of his loose principles and wild ways, he is kind-hearted and a stanch and loyal friend to Ginevra. He does his best to save both her and Lorenzo, though to the last he is unable to understand why any woman in her right mind should care so much more for her husband’s love than for his fortune, and why the ruin of the latter should be as nothing to her compared to even a passing breach in the former. The scene at the concert, where she first detects Lorenzo at a card-table, and it breaks upon her that her husband is a gambler, is finely introduced, and the conversation of Lando with the terrified young wife is admirably drawn. But we know that the real crisis in her peace and happiness has yet to come, and we hurry on till Donna Faustina enters. Lorenzo disarms us, and almost gains our sympathy for this evil genius of Ginevra, by the frankness with which he tells her story to the latter; but the relations between all three, as he now tries to establish them, are radically false, and it requires no prophetic eye to foresee how they must end. What barrier have either Faustina or Lorenzo to stem the torrent of passion when it breaks loose—outraged love and desire of revenge on her side, and on his the embers of a love that he fancies dead, but which it only needs the vanity of his own undisciplined nature and the spell of her guilty passion to fan into a livelier flame than ever? While the storm is rapidly rising in this direction, Gilbert de Kergy crosses Ginevra’s path; but she is yet far from suspecting that he is the messenger of fate to her, the one who is to exercise a supreme influence in her life and call out its energies in her soul’s defence with a courage that till now has never been demanded of her. We know how the battle is sure to go with Ginevra, as we foresee the issue with Lorenzo and Faustina. We see the force that will ensure the victory in the one case, just as we see how the want of it must lead to slavery and surrender in the other. And here again the skill and power of the author triumph and afford a striking contrast to the old system we have denounced. She never moralizes, or reminds us that Lorenzo, being a bad Christian, who never goes to Mass or the sacraments, is certain to fall, and that Ginevra, in spite of passions that sway her heart with such relentless power, will come safe out of it because of that restraining force which, like a mysterious presence, rules her even when she is unconscious of it—the author does not say these things; she proves them by making her characters demonstrate their truth and act out their conclusions. We will quote the passage where Gilbert and Ginevra part, only to meet again in those sweet and tempting days at Naples. Gilbert has been lecturing on his travels with an eloquence that carried away his hearers. Then Ginevra says:
“I remained seated near the mantelpiece, and fell into a dreamy silence, while Diana sat down to the piano. She began to execute, with consummate art, a nocturne of Chopin’s, which sounded to me like the expression, the very language, of my own thoughts.… I woke up from my reverie with a strange thrill, and blushed to the very roots of my hair; for in lifting my eyes I met those of Gilbert fixed upon me, and mine were full of tears. I brushed them away quickly, and muttered something about the effect Chopin’s music always had on my nerves, and then rose and drew near to the piano, where Diana continued to pass her hands in rapid changes over the keys.… Gilbert remained silent and pensive in the place where I had left him, following me with his eyes, and perhaps trying to guess the real cause of my emotion.… When the time had come for me to go, and Mme. de Kergy clasped me to her heart, I no longer strove to repress my tears.… Gilbert gave me his arm and conducted me to my carriage without speaking. As I was entering it, he said in a voice that faltered slightly:
“‘Those whom you are leaving are greatly to be pitied, madam.’
“‘I am still more to be pitied,’ I replied, and my tears flowed freely.
“He was silent for a moment, and then he said:
“‘As for me, I have the hope of seeing you again; for I shall come to Naples, … if I dare.’
“‘And why should you not dare? You will be received and welcomed as a friend.’
“He made no reply, but when he had placed me in the carriage, and I held out my hand to him to say adieu, he murmured in a low voice: Au revoir!’”
And he keeps his word. He goes to Naples and meets Ginevra at a ball, whither she has rushed, half mad with despair and jealousy, reckless of everything resolved to drown the anguish of her heart in the intoxication of gayety and the adulation of the world, that until now she had carelessly despised. It was the night after the masked ball at the Festina, where, on the impulse of the moment, she and her beautiful friend Stella went as dominos to join in the fun and mystify their friends a little. Ginevra recognized Lorenzo’s stately figure the moment she entered the ball-room, and, terrified at finding herself alone in the crowd, seized hold of his arm, clinging to him in silence. Lorenzo, deceived by the color of her domino, mistakes her for Faustina, whom he is expecting. He stoops low and whispers a tender welcome in her ear. Ginevra, with a stifled cry, starts from him and rushes frantically from the scene. The next night, with the delirium of this discovery upon her, she goes forth in her loveliest attire to dispute the palm of beauty with the rest.
“I had my diamonds and pearls brought out, and I gave precise directions as to how I intended to wear them; this done, long before the time came I began my toilet and spent an endless time over it. So many women seem to take pleasure in making a triumphant entry into a ball-room, I said to myself, and in being flattered and admired, why should I not taste of this pleasure as well as they? I am beautiful, I know that—very beautiful even. Why should I not attract and indulge my vanity and coquetry like other women?”
And she does attract, and her vanity is satisfied to overflowing. Her beauty and the dazzling splendor of her jewels create a perfect furore the moment she appears. She announces her intention of dancing, and the noblest cavaliers in the room are at her feet in a moment, quarrelling for the honor of her hand. Never was the triumph of a coquette more complete than Ginevra’s. Her youth and its instinctive love of pleasure vindicated themselves for a time, and she enjoyed her success to the full; but as the night wore on nobler instincts asserted themselves, worthier voices made themselves heard above the din of this ardent and puerile vanity, and Ginevra feels the cold chill of remorse stealing over her; a sense of vague misfortune takes possession of her and stills her feverish gayety like a touch of ice. Her last partner leads her to her seat, and she sinks into it exhausted and miserable.
“At the same moment,” she says, “I heard near me a voice well known though well-nigh forgotten—a voice at once calm, strong, and sweet, but which now sounded slightly sarcastic. ‘Although I cannot aspire to the honor of dancing with the Duchess de Valenzano, may I hope that she will deign to recognize me?’
“I turned around quickly. The speaker who stood there and thus addressed me was Gilbert de Kergy.”
The ordinary French novelist had here a fine opportunity for bringing matters to a crisis between Ginevra and Gilbert; but the present author uses it differently. Gilbert does not take advantage of the temporary madness of Ginevra to gain influence over her and beguile her from her allegiance to Lorenzo, faithless and cruel as he is. Gilbert is far too noble for this, and his first feeling, on beholding his ideal in this dangerous and unworthy atmosphere, is one of censure and poignant regret. Neither he nor Ginevra is of the conventional type of defaulters; both are good, high-principled, and brave; they are both practical Christians, and the idea of betraying their duty to God and to their own honor would have revolted them had it presented itself in its naked horror. But it did not. The approach was gradual, imperceptible. And here we have a great truth illustrated—one which it is customary in Catholic authors to ignore practically, if not theoretically: The possession of the faith and the practice of religion do not act as opiates on human beings, deadening their hearts and annihilating nature, and lifting them to a secure region where the great temptations of life cannot reach them, or where, if they do, they glide off harmless as arrows glance from the steel cuirass of the soldier. Ginevra is pure and true as ever woman was who vowed at the altar “that most solemn vow that a woman can utter”; she was, moreover, genuinely pious. Gilbert was the very ideal of manly chivalry and honor and goodness, an accomplished type of the Christian gentleman; but neither he nor she was fireproof when the time of trial came. He loved Ginevra before he knew it; and she, forsaken, humiliated, stung in her love and her wifely pride, is thrown into his constant companionship, not by her seeking, but through one of those accidents to which women of her class and circumstances are liable every day. She is grateful for Gilbert’s brotherly regard, she admires his noble life and his sentiments, so true, so different from those of other men; she is grateful to him for the frank rebuke which he spoke out at the ball when she was drifting she knew not whither. Step by step the friendship grows to a tenderer feeling, and at last culminates in a love whose depth and power Ginevra does not even suspect, so gradual has been its development. We tremble for her; but even when we see her tottering blindfold on the edge of the abyss, we feel certain she will never take the fatal plunge. All this is depicted with infinite delicacy and rare psychological skill.
Livia now reappears upon the scene as one of the visible forces that are guarding Ginevra along the slippery road. Livia is one of the most striking and carefully drawn of the subordinate characters. It is worth mentioning en passant that here, as elsewhere, Mrs. Craven breaks boldly through the time-honored traditions of the Catholic novelist. The holier and more spiritual-minded her dramatis personæ, the brighter, more sympathetic and accessible they are. Stella, the heroic friend in days of sorrow, so gifted, so beautiful, so untainted with the spirit of the world where she lives and moves—Stella has the high animal spirits of a school-girl, the glad heart—le sang joyeux, as she herself calls it—of a happy child. Livia, who in her father’s home was pensive almost to melancholy, the moment she embraces the austere rule of the cloister, spending her days in the contemplation of heavenly things, grows as merry as a lark. Joy is henceforth the keynote and regulator of her life; we have no trace of the downcast face and solemn, mournful voice that have hitherto been characteristic of pious people in novels. No one pulls long faces here, or whines or sighs, except it may be those who have forsaken the fountain where true joy has its spring, to drink of the poisoned waters of this world’s pleasures, of sin, ambition, or folly. How winning, too, is Livia’s tender interest in the gay life of her brilliant young sister! She has not closed her heart against the actors on the world’s stage outside her convent gates, but keeps her sympathies wide open to all life and all humanity beyond them.
“‘Gina mia, you don’t tell me everything,’ she says one day that Ginevra is conversing with her through the grating. ‘Is it that you think I take no interest in your life now?’
“‘It is not only that, Livia, but it is difficult to talk about such trivial, foolish things in presence of these bars and looking at you as you stand behind them.’
“‘Nay, it is always good for me to hear you and for you to talk to me,’ replied Livia. ‘It is true that when Aunt Clelia comes here with her daughters, I put on a severe countenance now and then, and tell them pretty plainly what I think of the world; … but I must say that my aunt bears me no malice for it, for she counts on my vocation to get good husbands for Mariuccia and Teresina.… She does not look upon me as “jettatrice” at all now, I can tell you!’
“She laughed so merrily as she spoke that I could not help exclaiming with envy and surprise:
“‘Livia, how happy you are to be so gay!’”
The sense of humor, so essential to preserve the balance in true mental power, is not wanting in this story. Donna Clelia is lightly and brightly touched. She is everywhere true to herself; self-important, silly, and good-natured, she and her daughters are redeemed from hopeless vulgarity as much by their naïveté and naturalness as by the sheer inability of the author to depict vulgarity—a fact which we notice without comment, leaving our readers to decide whether it be a merit or a fault. Donna Clelia’s intense satisfaction at being able to parade “my niece, the duchess” is one of those touches that throw a character into striking relief. Her enthusiasm for the “view” from the baronessa’s house, where “not a donkey-boy, nor a cart, nor a horse, nor a man, nor a woman could pass in the narrow street but you saw them so plainly you could tell the pattern of their clothes,” gives us the measure of her artistic perceptions, while her raptures over the situation “with the church on one side and the new theatre on the other … figurateir! so that the baronessa can let herself into the church on the right, and through a passage into her box in the theatre on the left,” is equally characteristic of the manners and minds of the society around her. The description of the splendid pageant of the Carnival, passing under Donna Clelia’s balcony, is as spirited a bit of picturesque writing as we have come upon for a long time. But we hurry on through these gay and vivid scenes, impatient for the crisis that is at hand between Gilbert and Ginevra. Nothing, so far, had prepared our heroine for its approach.
“Apparently,” says Ginevra, “and in reality, our intercourse was precisely what it had always been; every word he said to me might have been said before the whole world. I felt, it is true, that he spoke to me as he did not speak to any one else, and I, on my side, spoke to no one as I did to him. We were seldom alone, but every evening, in the drawing-room or on the terrace, he managed to converse with me for a moment or two when no one was by. He did not disguise from me that these stolen moments were to him the most enjoyable of the evening, and I knew they were the same to me. From time to time something indefinable in his voice, in his glance, even in his silence, made me shudder as at some threat of danger. But as he had never swerved by so much as a word from the position he had assumed towards me—that of a friend—my slumbering conscience did not awake!”
The awakening, however, came at last. The immediate occasion of it was an eruption of Vesuvius, which is described with a dramatic power worthy, if possible, of the sublime and terrible subject. The mountain is on fire; the lava streams forth from a rent in its side, and, strong and pitiless as fate, flows on over vineyards and villages and smiling gardens, spreading desolation before it. Ginevra, with a large party of friends, goes out to witness the magnificent spectacle from a safe eminence. She and Gilbert are thrown together and climb to the top of a hillock overlooking the scene of the conflagration. The flames rose on all sides as in some vengeful apocalypse, high, fantastic, awful. Ginevra could not take away her eyes from the sight, but gazed on it as on some mysterious apparition that held her spell-bound. At last she exclaimed:
“‘This is truly la città dolente! We have before our eyes a faithful picture of the last day!’
“Gilbert did not answer. He was a prey to some emotion more poignant than mine, and, in glancing towards him in the lurid glare of the fire, I was frightened by the change in his features and their strange expression. ‘Would to heaven,’ he muttered at last, ‘that it were so in reality, and that the last day were come for me! Yes, I wish I could die here, on this spot, near you and worthy of you!’
“In spite of the appalling scene around us, in spite of the roar of the detonations thundering above the dull noise of the lava, the accent of his voice struck upon my ear, and his words made my heart leap up with an emotion mingled with terror.
“‘You are growing giddy,’ I said, and my voice trembled. ‘Take care; the effect of looking long at this is sometimes to draw one on to the abyss.’
“‘Yes, Donna Ginevra,’ he replied in the same strange tone, ‘you are right; I am giddy and I am walking on to the abyss. I know it. I exposed myself rashly; I presumed too much on my strength.’
“The look which he fixed upon me in pronouncing these words gave them a meaning which it was impossible to misunderstand. It was no longer Gilbert who was speaking to me; it was no longer the man to whom I fancied I had granted only the safe privileges of a friend. The bandage which I had wilfully placed upon my eyes fell off in an instant, and, in the sudden emotion which followed, the sight of the roaring flames that encircled us, the certain peril to which one step further would lead us, appeared to me as the exact representation of the danger to which I had madly exposed my honor and my soul! For one moment I covered my face with my hands, not daring to utter a word. At last I said in a voice of supplication:
“‘Monsieur de Kergy, cease to look upon the fire that surrounds us; lift up your head and see how, far above this hell, the night is calm and beautiful!…’
Gilbert’s eyes followed mine and remained for some time fixed upon the peaceful stars, that seemed, indeed, as far away from the terrible convulsion of nature as from that which was agitating our souls. Mine felt the need of a mighty help, and I murmured in a low voice, and with a fervor which had long been absent from my prayers: ‘O my God! have pity upon me.’ A long silence ensued, and then Gilbert said in a voice that was low and tremulous:
“‘Will you forgive me, madame? Will you trust yourself to me to lead you from this place?’
“‘Yes, I will trust you,’ I replied. ‘But let us make haste to leave it, for it is dangerous.…’
“‘Do not fear,’ he said in a tone that had resumed its wonted calmness; ‘we must make haste, but the only danger would be if you were to become frightened. Give me your hand.’
“He would have taken it, but I hesitated and made an involuntary movement, as if I meant to descend without his help.
“‘In the name of Heaven,’ he said quickly, and trembling with agitation, ‘don’t refuse my assistance in this extremity! You cannot do without it; you must give me your hand!’
“His voice was now almost imperious; I gave him my hand, and, grasping his arm firmly with the other, we descended the hill slowly together.”
But although this first victory is the sure guarantee of the ultimate one, Ginevra has a fierce battle yet to fight. Perhaps it will be better that our cursory notice of the story should, however, end here, and that we should leave our readers to discover the sequel for themselves: how the same strong hand which held Ginevra safe on the brink of the precipice led her faithfully through the peril, and brought her back, not only to the inward peace which follows every generous renunciation, every conquest over self, but how it finally won back her husband’s love, crowning them both with a joy such as they had never known in the days of their early happiness. The fitness of Lorenzo’s punishment, the wreck of his fortune through one passion and the vengeance brought upon his selfish pride by the other, is worked out with a constructive art of no mean order. The minor characters and their parts are carefully finished and satisfactorily disposed of. Livia to the last shines like a sweet, pure star above the horizon of Ginevra’s stormy life, pointing onwards and upwards with faithful hand, never too strong for pity or too far removed for sympathy, sorrowing with those who mourn, rejoicing with those who rejoice. Her interview with Ginevra after the fearful ordeal through which the latter has passed, when she comes like one who has been “saved, but through fire,” to seek consolation in the peaceful atmosphere of the convent, rises to a high degree of power. We are strongly tempted to quote the scene between Padre Egidio and Ginevra, but it is almost too sacred to be made matter of critical comment, and would lose, moreover, much in effect by being detached from the complete frame, and especially from the crucial experiences which prepared Ginevra’s soul for that touch of the divine hand which healed and strengthened and uplifted her in one instant. Such an episode can only be appreciated in its proper place as part of a whole which justifies and glorifies it. The close of the story is full of deep pathos.
It is significant that this novel, which is recognized as the herald of a new era in Catholic literature, should have made its appearance at the same time in France and in America. May we not venture to infer from the coincidence that America, in harmony with sound Catholic teaching, placing greater confidence in human nature, may aid in redeeming Catholic English fiction, and prove to the world that the faith does not paralyze the imagination, but elevates it; leaving the novelist at liberty to deal with the deepest problems of life, to disport himself freely in the wide realms of fancy, nature, and the world, and, guided and enlightened by the Spirit of truth, to grasp with a firm hand and turn to the best account all those things that come within the scope and province of art?
[69] Le Mot de l’Enigme—The Veil Withdrawn. By Madame Craven. Translated by permission. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1875.
[70] “For life, is too short!”
[71] “Beatrice gazed upwards, and I on her did gaze.” —Dante.