Chapter II: December 22

Last night we reached Gibraltar and dropped anchor in the bay. It was an impressive sight when first we came in view of land. On our right lay Morocco, on our left Spain, and the lights on either shore became visible about the same time. There are not many spots even on this goodly globe of ours where one can see two continents. The night was lovely, the air almost balmy, the stars were all out--ever so many more stars than can be seen at home--and we stood long on deck and gazed our fill at the splendour of the night. Truly the skies declare the glory of God and the firmament of heaven shows forth the work of His hands.

This morning, about 8.30, most of the first-class passengers landed in a tender. It was good to feel one's foot once more on terra firma--and surely if there is firm footing on earth it is the Rock of Gibraltar. The place I will not attempt to describe; that were quite beyond me. Enough to say, and certainly not too much, that the panorama which lies before one from half-way up the mountain--we had not time to go all the way--is one of the grandest that anywhere unfolds itself to the eye of man. And the city is full of interest. It is the meeting-place of two continents, the free mart and seaport of all nations, the most famous stronghold of the greatest empire under the sun. One could wish if one had time, to study the various types of humanity that gather here. By all odds the most striking is the turban'd Moor, with his swart features, his impassive face, his picturesque costume, his gait and carriage not lacking in dignity. We enter the principal Catholic Church, rather a fine building, and are happily able to assist at Mass. We see the Bishop for a moment, an Italian Benedictine, a native of Siena, a very genial and pleasant man. By eleven we are back on board, and by noon are steaming around Barracks Point and entering the Mediterranean.

* * *

DECEMBER 23.

We have made our best run--348 knots from noon yesterday till noon to-day. Our ship, though a splendid seaboat, is not speedy, and these two last trips has fallen behind her schedule. An expert engineer, sent down especially from London, has joined us at Gibraltar, and we are now making better time. Smooth seas, sunny skies, and a summer temperature have made this latter part of our voyage extremely pleasant, and yet we long for its end, or rather we long to reach our goal. Several of the passengers left us at Gibraltar, others joined us there. It is the way of life, which is all summed up in a coming and a going and a passing away. In truth we do but get glimpses of one another as we pass through it. How short is all that comes to an end! "We have not here a lasting city, but seek one which is to come."

* * *

DECEMBER 24.

Sardinia's snowy mountain tops fringing the
southern sky.

The line comes back to me from school days, as I gaze on those mountain-tops, bare and rugged, and snowless to-day. Sardinia is one of the largest islands in the Mediterranean. It has a population of more than 700,000. Once one of the granaries of Carthage, and later of imperial Rome, it is now in great part untilled and barren. The natives are more like Spaniards than Italians, though the island belongs to Italy. In certain districts of the interior the people speak the Latin tongue, which serves to confute the received notion--never more than a wretched half-truth, and not even as much--that Latin is a dead language. What, the language of the Church Catholic a dead language! Not while she lives, and the eternal years of God are hers.

Christmas at sea; Christmas without the wonted Christmas cheer; Christmas far from home and friends. But so were Mary and Joseph on that first Christmas night in Bethlehem, far from home and friends. And, please God, we are going to land in Naples to-morrow in time to celebrate the Christ-Mass.

* * *

DECEMBER 25.

Before daylight this Christmas morning we are on deck, where we linger most of the time till our ship is docked in Naples at 10 a.m. The approach to the city from the sea is very grand. In the gray dawn we discern the light on Ischia, which shows far out at sea. As day creeps on, the outline of Vesuvius becomes dimly visible through the morning haze. We pass some islets, then Pozzuoli and other suburbs of the queenly city. The sun is now full risen; 't is

Morn on the waters, and purple and bright

its light illuminates the lovely bay, gilds the heights of Sant' Elmo and the roofs of Chiaia, which curves beneath. The docks and shipping lie further on, and beyond them rises the giant form of dread Vesuvius. Little wonder that lovers of panoramic scenery go into raptures over this scene. If it is not "See Naples and die," at any rate it is "See Naples and never-more forget." The words of the well-known boat song come unbidden to one's lips:

O dolce Napoli!
O suol beato!
Ove sorridere
Vuole il creato;
Tu sei l' impero
Dell' armonia;
Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia!

O lovely Naples!
Favoured ground.
Where smiling Nature's
Charms abound;
The native home
Of beauty thou:
Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia!

It takes a deal of ceremony to get a big ship like ours docked, and a deal of patience to wait on an empty stomach for the word to land. At last we are ashore, through the custom-house, and on our way to the Convent of the Soeurs de L'Esperance, No. 10 Via Santa Teresa, Chiaia. We say Mass at 11.30 a.m. in the Church of St. Teresa hard by, which, with the adjoining monastery is in the hands of the Discalced Carmelites. In the afternoon we take a walk on the esplanade, which runs along the bay, visit the Aquarium, mount the hill to Sant' Elmo, and from that commanding height gaze upon the city, the bay, and the broken ranges of mountains that stud the coast. The native band of Chiaia, a great but inharmonious concert of crowing roosters, awakens us next morning long before the dawn, and by 10.30 we are getting our last glimpse of cloud-capped Vesuvius from the window of the Romeward-bound train.

* * *

DECEMBER 26.

The country through which we pass for the first hour or two after quitting Naples does not yield in beauty or fertility even to the plains of Lombardy. Every foot of it is tilled; the tillage is intensive as well as extensive. Here the vine is trailed on great rows of trees, the wide spaces between being now green with all manner of vegetables, while the stately Italian pine lends an added grace and dignity to the landscape. As we go further north, the broad plain narrows into valleys hemmed in by bare and lofty mountains, with here a village clinging to a rocky slope, and there a lone monastery crowning a rugged crest. By noon we reach Casino, and presently admiring eyes are raised to the giddy height where the great abbey of that name, famed in story, lords it over all the land.

As straws show how the wind blows, so very little things serve oftentimes to bring racial and national characteristics into clear relief. Thus, over a plot of green in the public garden at Chiaia, I read these formidable words of warning: I TRASGRESSORI SARANNO PUNITI A NORMA DI LEGGE, which may be rendered: TRESPASSERS SHALL BE PUNISHED TO THE LIMIT OF THE LAW. We simply and bluntly say: Keep off the grass! Again, a railway ticket, on which with us are sometimes found the words, Not transferable, bears here the blazoned legend, La cessione e punita a termini di legge, that is to say, The transfer is punishable in the precise manner laid down in the law. On the other hand, the attempt of some Italian railway official to ape your bluff Englishman, in rendering a notice graven in letters of bronze on the window of our carriage, E pericoloso sporgersi--It is dangerous to put one's head out of the window, comes to grief in this ludicrous fashion, similarly cut in bronze, Don't stretch out! Ecco Roma! We have finished our journey. Monday afternoon (Dec. 29) I saw Cardinal Gotti. This (Tuesday), evening I go on retreat at the Lazarist Mission House near Montecitorio, where I made my retreat for the priesthood twenty-five years ago. Sunday (Jan. 3) is the day fixed for the consecration. There is a hastening of events, as one chapter of life draws to a close; and hastily I close this last paragraph.

* * *

FROM NAPLES TO CAIRO.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 1909.

We leave Rome by the 10 a.m. express and reach Naples at 14.30. Yesterday we came to Rome from Assisi. At Terni I bought a lunch basket which contained (1) a paper napkin, (2) a knife, (3) a loaf of bread, (4) a cake of sweetbread, (5) two slices of meat, (6) a couple of slices of sausage, (7) salt, (8) a bit of chicken, (9) toothpicks, (10) a bottle of wine, (11) an orange, (12) a piece of cheese, (13) some walnuts--all for two francs. I question whether there is any other country in the world where you could buy so much food for so little money.

A facchino, or railway porter, at Naples, plays us a scurvy trick. We hand him over our luggage at the station, and tell him we want to get a carriage to take us on board the Regina Margherita. After a moment's thought, he tells us it is but two minutes' walk, and he will take us on board for four francs--which we think rather too much, but agree to give. He leads us along dirty streets for at least ten minutes, and fetches up finally at a landing place, where he and sundry boatmen engage in a war of words, to which vehement gesticulations lend a sanguinary aspect--all calculated to impress us with the difficulty of getting to our steamer. Presently he motions us to step into one of the boats, which we, in our innocence, do in fear and trembling, while he quickly makes off. But the boatman will not budge till we have paid him four francs. Then he quietly rows us round a ship, and up to a dock, where, to our surprise and great disgust, we behold our Regina Margherita cosily moored! Two Neapolitan ragamuffins extort further tribute for carrying our traps on board. "For ways that are dark and tricks that are--vain" seems hardly the word, and I leave the reader to finish the sentence.

* * *

THURSDAY, JANUARY 21.

We awake this morning in the Strait of Messina, scene of the late frightful catastrophe. On our right, but at some distance, is the city of that name, once fair as few cities are, now a corpse, torn and disfigured, with the light of life gone out of it. Farther up the Strait, on our left, is ruined Reggio. At a first glance the ruins are not seen, but closer scrutiny, with the help of a pair of glasses, reveals them. One very large building in the upper part of the town is still on its feet. In many cases the walls are left standing, mute witnesses of the ruin within and without. I cannot discern a single church tower or steeple in all the stricken city. By ten o'clock we are off Cape Spartivento (Split-the-wind), the toe of the Italian boot, and by twelve the last of the tall hills of Southern Italy has faded away on the horizon.

Great is Italian reverence for that which has been and is, an admirable sentiment in its way, but one which tends to conserve in being things that are and ought not to be. For example. I was awakened this morning at five o'clock by a rattling noise which I took to be due to some iron fastening having become loose. I groped my way on deck, but could see nothing. Meeting one of the stewards, I asked him what made the noise, "E il temone--it is the steering-gear," he made answer, and suggested that I could get a room on the lower deck where the noise would not be heard. Going on deck after daylight I found the clatter was caused by a bolt, which kept the rod of the steering-gear in place, having too much play. The ship's smith was busied hard by with mending a windlass, and I drew his attention to the matter. He eyed me in mild wonderment, and with a characteristic shrug of the shoulders, said, "E sempre stato cosi--It has always been like that." So there you are! Hundreds upon hundreds of passengers have been robbed of their sleep by the clatter of this bolt, but what of that? The nuisance must go unabated, because--E sempre stato cosi!

P. S. I must set on record the fact that the thing has since been remedied: for the future, passengers in stateroom No --, of the Regina Margherita may rest in peace.

* * *

FRIDAY, JANUARY 22.

All the afternoon we are chased by a thunderstorm, but manage to keep ahead of it. We do, however, get the wind that goes with it, and there is a deal of motion in the ship, and a deal of squeamishness in certain stomachs. By eight o'clock we have left the storm behind, and by ten have abeam the light on a little island off Crete, or Candia, as it is also called. We think of St. Paul and the hardships he endured along this coast while he was on his way to Rome. The Cretans of his time seem to have been a pretty bad lot, for he cites "a prophet of their own" as saying that they were "always liars, wicked brutes, lazy bellies," and vouches for the truth of the indictment. But there must have been some good ones among them, for he made many converts there, and gave his beloved disciple Titus to be their first Bishop.

* * *

SATURDAY, JANUARY 23.

I've had an interesting talk with two Franciscan Fathers, one the Visitor-General of the Order, the other the well-known American author, Paschal Robinson. We are now within ten hours' sail of Egypt--Egypt old in story, of which the Sphinx is fitting emblem, land of many riddles yet unsolved. We shall reach there before dawn to-morrow.

* * *

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 27.

Back on board the Regina Margherita, and on the way to Jaffa (Joppa). Early Sunday morning we land at Alexandria, say Mass in the Franciscan Church there, and at 11 a.m. take the train for Cairo, which we reach some three hours later. The distance is about 140 miles. We are traversing perhaps the most fertile tract of country in the world, along the delta of the Nile. It is one vast plain as far as the eye can see, from edge to edge of the horizon, green with growing crops of wheat and cotton. On all sides are groves of acacias and lines of stately palm, while long caravans of camels, passing parallel to the line of railway, lend an added picturesqueness to the landscape. Egypt, to the intellect a land of mystery, is to the eye a land of beauty--land of the evergreen. And yet one misses the snow-capped mountains which make of Italy, and still more of Switzerland, a fairyland of romance. Here it is always summer, and the crops keep growing perennially; as many as four crops are raised in the year. Little rain falls, and the tiller of the soil would wish it were less than that little, for the waters of the Nile irrigate the land, and it is the hot sun out of a cloudless sky that favours growth. I have said the tiller of the soil when I should have rather said the owner, who is generally a Jew or a Turk. Your Arab Fellah gets his pittance of four piastres (about twenty cents) a day, and is better off with that than he was before the English came in, when the Khedive sent his servants to take heavy toll of the ripened crops.

The Arab subdued the Copt, lineal descendant of the ancient Egyptians, and was in turn subdued by the Turk. He is a picturesque figure, with his white turban or red fez, his flowing robes, his sandalled, oftentimes bare, feet. The women are veiled up to the eyes, with a curious covering on the nose, which seems to serve no particular purpose and is certainly not an ornament. The young of the male sex are for the most part of a pleasing appearance. But with advancing years the features of these people take on a hard and somewhat repulsive look, half of submission, half of hopelessness, not unlike that which one sees in the eyes of that much abused beast of burden, the ass, which for six decades of centuries has borne the whips and scorns of his master, man. It is the fatalism of the race that finds expression in that look--the feeling that it is of no use kicking against the pricks of a relentless destiny. And so the Arab goes his way, bearing the burden of life sadly but submissively. His whole philosophy is summed up in the one word malesh (a as in "ma," e as in "edge," both vowels long drawn out,) which is forever on his lips: "It doesn't matter"--nothing matters in a world where so much is amiss and so little can be mended. We spend two days in Cairo, during which we visit Matarieh, Old Cairo, the citadel and famous mosque of alabaster, the museum with its mummies, and the pyramids. At Matarieh is the well of sweet water which gushed forth, tradition has it, when the Holy Family came into Egypt, and the sycamore which gave them shelter. The present tree is more than three hundred years old. At Old Cairo is shown the site of the cottage in which dwelt the Holy Family. It is in the crypt of an ancient basilica, the style of which bespeaks the fifth or sixth century. The place is in the hands of the Schismatical Copts; it was the daughter of the Coptic priest who unlocked the door for us. In Old Cairo one sees the Arab in the primeval environment of the unchanging East. All is primitive here. Bedouin and Jew, camel, donkey, and goat move along pell-mell, jostling one another in the narrow, crooked, foul-smelling streets. I would not advise a visit to the market-place just before dinner--it might spoil one's appetite. There is some very ancient dirt in Old Cairo--and some that is not so ancient. Newman says somewhere that no dirt is immortal, but he is speaking of another sort of dirt, and, anyhow, he never set foot in this Egyptian town, laved but washed not by the waters of the Nile.

In striking contrast to the lowly ass, is that other beast of burden, the lordly camel. With what lofty disdain it sniffs the air as it looks down upon its mean environment--pigmy man included. It is a proud creature--proud even of the hump on its back. It has been tamed by man after a fashion, but not subdued, and its eyes belie the obedience that it outwardly yields to its puny master.

* * *

ROME, MARCH 9, 1909.

We returned from the East a couple of weeks ago, and are now getting ready to leave for home. We are to sail from Southampton for New York on the 31st. Of our visit to the Holy Land I write nothing now; I may later, but life is uncertain. Of Egypt I might have written more, but my notes are lost, as ill luck would have it, and I write from memory. Had not those notes been lost--in some such way we used to put it in boyhood's days when spinning sgialachan by the fireside--this letter had been longer.

THROUGH SPAIN.

Two things led me to leave the "Saxonia" at Gibraltar, and journey through the Spanish peninsula. I wanted to go to Lourdes, and I wanted to drink in the memories of St. Teresa, Spain's chiefest glory, at the fountain-head. At Algeciras, right across from Gibraltar, I set foot for the first time on the soil of Spain. The train for Ronda was waiting, and I stepped on board. The railway passes through a wild, mountainous region, rich in traces of the Moorish occupation. At Ronda I said Mass in the chapel of the Little Sisters of the Poor. One of the Sisters was from Dumfries, in Scotland, and one from our own Quebec. I asked them how they came to be in Ronda, and they said they were like soldiers and had to go where they were sent. The Little Sisters have their houses and do their Christlike work in many parts of the world. Wherever the Catholic Church is, where the Cross of Christ points heavenward, there they are at home.

* * *

Andalusia comprises the four old Moorish Kingdoms of Jaen, Seville, Granada, and Cordova. It is the most fascinating province of Spain. The scenic beauty of mountain and valley soothes the mind, while the soft languorous climate steeps the senses in repose. To the voluptuous Mohammedan Andalusia was well worth fighting for. And long he fought and fiercely ere he gave it back finally to the sons of Spain.

* * *

The region from Ronda to Seville is wonderfully fertile. So indeed is nearly the whole of Spain--land of the vine and the olive, land of corn and wheat, land of clear blue skies and brilliant sun. Seville, on the banks of the Guadalquiver, is a city of great interest, possessing a wealth of historical associations. It has passed through many vicissitudes from the time of the Romans down. The long domination of the Moors has stamped an oriental character upon it. I said Mass at the Convent of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, founded by the famous Mary Ward. The Sisters are commonly known as the Loreto Nuns, and in Spain as "Las Madres Irlandesas." They teach a day school in Seville, and have a boarding school outside the city. I met one who said she was connected by ties of kinship with the family of St. Teresa. She wrote for me in Spanish a saying of the saint, which shows she was human enough to hate Seville because it was so hot: "Whoever suffers the heat of Seville with patience has done penance enough." It seems a pity the human element should have been almost wholly eliminated from our Lives of the Saints. The run of those that have come down to us, especially from mediæval times, are little more than an abstract of the heroic virtues practised by the saints and the miracles performed by them. The servants of God are set up on a pedestal so high and so far away that we feel as if we could never hope to get near to them at all. And yet they had their human side, to us intensely interesting, for, to apply in a good sense what was first written disparagingly,

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

* * *

At Seville I visited the monastery of Discalced Carmelites founded by St. Teresa. The present one was built by St. John of the Cross in a different locality from that of the original monastery, because the situation of this latter one was found to be unhealthy. Over the grille is a wooden cross erected by St. John, the faithful co-worker of St. Teresa, a man of lofty spirit kindred to her own. I was shown an autograph letter of his, bearing date March 28, 1586. The handwriting is very legible. Of St. Teresa's own relics there are the following: (1) an autograph letter, signed "Teresa of Jesus," the name being spelled as written, not "Theresa," which follows the French "Thérèse;" (2) a bit of the hair shirt worn by the saint; (3) a medicine bottle used by her in her last illness--which shows her to have been human to the end; (4) a large white woolen mantle that she wore, the mantle of her Order; (5) one of her slippers, now so richly embroidered that the original cannot be seen; (6) last and far the most signal relic of all, the autograph original of the Interior Castle, or Castle of the Soul, perhaps her greatest work. The handwriting is somewhat peculiar, and the text not easily read, because in many cases the syllables are separated. This priceless autograph is in an excellent state of preservation, bound with heavy plates of gold. It came into possession of the monastery, the nuns told me, through one of the first novices of the community, her father, a gentleman of high social standing, having received it from a Carmelite priest who was intimate in life with St. Teresa.

* * *

The Father Prior of the Discalced Carmelites at Seville, who speaks English well, having spent some years in England as a missionary, gave me a story handed down by tradition in the Carmelite Order. It shows at once the terms of loving familiarity on which St. Teresa lived with Our Lord and her ready wit. The convent at Burgos, in the north of Spain, was her last foundation. She feared to go there in mid-winter because of the cold, but Our Lord reminded her that He was the source of all warmth. The roads being all but impassable, she and her companions suffered great hardships, and at one place were nearly drowned in the waters of a stream that had overflowed its banks. Gently complaining to her Divine Spouse, she was told that these were favours He reserved for His friends. "That," she rejoined, "is why your friends are so few!" "She as very saucy with Him," said an Irish nun at Madrid, on my reciting this story. The playful sally finds its proper setting and balance in those other words of the saint that we read in her _Foundations_, ch. xxxi: "O my Lord, how true it is that you repay with a cross those who do you a service! But what an inestimable treasure that cross is to those who truly love you, were it but given them at once to realize its value! And yet, they would not have sought to possess themselves of the treasure, the price to be paid seeming at the moment too great." So hard is it for us to bear what presses here and now upon us, even when we are quite persuaded that every trial is a crucible for the minting of heaven's gold.

* * *

I did but pass through Madrid on my way to Avila. The city is modern, having none of the quaintness of other Spanish towns. The Loreto Nuns have a convent and school in the outskirts. Even the little tots must speak English. A course at this convent is greatly desired for their daughters by Spanish mothers since Princess Victoria came to share with Alfonso the throne of Spain.

* * *

About midway between Madrid and Avila, with great ridges of rock above and around it, stands the palace of the Escorial, built by Philip the Second, husband of Mary Tudor. It compares with the pyramids of Egypt in size and solidity. It is at once a palace, a monastery, a church, and a mausoleum. There are not in all the world more gorgeous tombs than those that here enclose the ashes of the kings and queens of Spain. In the treasury of the monastery I saw the little statue of the Blessed Virgin before which Pope St. Pius V prayed during the battle of Lepanto. Queen Elizabeth II has decked it with a crown of brilliants. In the library, among manuscripts of priceless value, are four of the autograph writings of St. Teresa, the Book of the Foundations, the Manner of Visiting Convents, the Way of Perfection, and the Life by herself. All these were collected, not without difficulty, by the royal founder of the Escorial, who died sixteen years after St. Teresa, in 1598.

* * *

Avila, famed evermore as the birthplace and home of St. Teresa, is situated in the centre of the province of that name, west of Segovia and south of Valladolid. The hill on which it stands rises out of an undulating country to the north, and, on the south, overlooks a broad plain which stretches away almost as far as the eye can see to a range of mountains known as the Sierras of Avila. The waters of the Adaja river bathe the foot of the cliffs to the west. On the southwestern slope of the hill, facing the wide extent of meadow land and the distant mountains, stands the old home of St. Teresa, enclosed within a Dominican monastery. Here one is shown the room where she was born, now a chapel in which the Blessed Sacrament is kept. Here also, but some feet under the ground--for old things have a way of sinking into the earth--, is the little garden where, a child of seven, she played at being a nun, and with her brother, four years her senior planned to seek the crown of martyrdom among the Moors. "We settled," she tells us, "to go together to the country of the Moors, begging our way there for the love of God, that we might be beheaded there." "I ran away," was the naive excuse precocious piety gave her mother, "because I wanted to see God, and one cannot do that without dying."

* * *

Avila is little changed since Teresa de Ahumada and Rodriquez de Cepeda stole softly along its cobbled streets and left its lofty portals behind, in the gray dawn of that summer's day, some four hundred years ago. The stones, since worn by many feet, are the same that they trod; the stout walls that defied Moorish assault still look proudly down upon the stranger that enters at the gate. Outside the walls are two religious houses which are fragrant with the memories of St. Teresa. One is the Convent of St. Joseph, the other the Monastery of the Incarnation. The latter stands on a hill a few hundred yards to the north of the town. There Teresa first made her vows, and there she lived for twenty-seven years, three of which she was Prioress. Among her relics there are (1) a little water jug, (2) a crucifix borne by her when she went forth to found new convents, (3) the key of her cell, (4) a document concerning the dowry of a religious, signed by the saint and the four nuns who established with her the new foundation. I sat in the chair, by the side of the grille, where St. Peter of Alcantara and St. Francis Borgia conversed with her on spiritual subjects. It was there that a nun, happening along one day, found herself and St. John of the Cross raised above the ground in an ecstasy of contemplation. The quick-witted Teresa put it all on her companion. "See," she said, "what comes of talking with Father John!"

* * *

St. Joseph's of Avila, now known as the Convent of St. Teresa, is on the east side, just outside the walls, but within the town limits. It was the saint's first foundation, the beginning of the Reform. Here are several relics, among others a tambourine on which the saint used to play. Her body lies incorrupt at Alba de Tormes, where she died. The morning I went to say Mass at St. Joseph's, I was accompanied by two English ladies, a mother and daughter, Anglicans both, very High Church, and very much interested in all that related to St. Teresa. They knelt to the Blessed Sacrament on entering, and assisted at Mass with every mark of devotion. We afterwards spoke with the nuns at the grating. They showed us the relics of their holy foundress, and bade us be sure to visit the chapel built by her in connection with her first foundation. I had told the mother the night before of the sweet odor I perceived when, at the Escorial, the Augustinian Father had opened the glass case that contained the four autograph writings of St. Teresa. Just as we entered the chapel I felt the same sweet odor, and asked the mother if she perceived it. "Yes," she said, "but it is a very elusive odor." A nun at Seville had spoken to me of the odor exhaled by the relics of the saint, and had said that some perceived it but others didn't, and that even to the same person it was perceptible at times, at other times not. It seemed to me something like the odor of incense, and yet I am quite sure it was not that. I was much impressed with the fact that it was the self-same odor I perceived in those two widely distant places.

* * *

At the hotel in Avila I met an American lady who had not visited her native land in five years. She was so taken with Europe, she said, that she thought she should never cross the Atlantic again. Perhaps the recent terrible happenings may have made her change her mind. The conversation turning on St. Teresa, I said I looked upon her as being, after the Blessed Virgin, the greatest woman saint that ever lived. My American friend believed she must yield the palm to St. Catherine of Siena. And truly the latter may contest the palm in the outer world of action. But I was thinking rather of the inner world of the spirit, where piety rears "a building of God, a house not made with hands." No one has thrown clearer or more copious light upon the things of that inner world than the author of "The Way of Perfection" and "The Castle of the Soul." For the rest, "star differs from star in brightness," and it is not for us, short-sighted and dim of vision as we are, to say which shines with the greatest lustre. Stars there are, too, in the firmament of the Church that have never swum into our ken. We shall see them when we have passed hence, even as those who pass to the other side of the globe behold the Southern Cross.--Mrs. Hemans's lines on that brilliant constellation come to one unbidden: they are put in the mouth of some son or daughter of Spain:

Thou recallest the ages when first o'er the main
My fathers unfolded the ensign of Spain,
And planted their faith in the regions that see
Its unperishing symbol emblazoned in thee.

Shine on--my own land is a far distant spot,
And the stars of thy sphere can enlighten it not,
And the eyes that I love, though e'en now they may be
O'er the firmament wandering, can gaze not on thee!

* * *

On leaving Avila I visited Valladolid. To me the most interesting place there was the Scots College, once a home of the Jesuits and their house of studies in the days of the great Suarez. Here many of the men who kept the torch of faith burning in the Scottish Highlands during the dark night of persecution received their education for the priesthood. The Very Reverend Alexander MacDonald, V.G., who died at Mabon, Cape Breton, in 1865, left Valladolid for Lismore, Scotland, in 1816, as the college records bear witness. It was from him I got in baptism the light of faith.

* * *

I slept at San Sebastian on my way to Lourdes. Of my visit to that famous shrine I write elsewhere.

LOURDES REVISITED.

VICTORIA, B.C., AUGUST, 1914.

I visited Lourdes again in May of the present year. Much water had passed under the old stone bridge that spans the Gave since last I gazed on that swirling stream, and listened to the hoarse music of its voice. Lourdes has grown a great deal in these fourteen years. The old town has widened its bounds on the right bank of the river, and on the left the low meadow land is covered with shops and hotels. These, indeed, may be said to make up the town. In the shops, as I also noted when last I was there, the wares are almost wholly of a devotional character--a fact that gave rise to the following incident. The joke that gives it point is at my own expense.

I left my soap at Saint Sebastian, the last town in Spain ere you cross into France. It may be needful to tell the reader that the traveller in Europe has to carry his own soap. I wanted to buy that necessary article in Lourdes, but did not know where to get it. The stores that lined the streets on either side seemed to offer nothing but beads, medals, statues, etc. What was worse, I could not for the life of me recall the French word for soap. I tried to get at it through the Italian "sapone." Cutting off the final vowel, I entered the nearest store, and boldly asked for "sapon." The salesmaid at first looked puzzled. But on my repeating the order, her face broke into a smile of comprehension. Quickly she sped to a corner of the store, and thence brought me a tiny statue of St. Paul! "Sapon," no doubt, sounded more like "Saint Pol" than like the elusive "savon" that I had tried in vain to get hold of. Going into another shop, where a window bore the legend "English and German spoken," I asked for soap. They told me the girl who was to wait on English-speaking customers had not yet joined the staff. I inquired in Italian if they knew that language, and to my great relief was answered in the affirmative, and directed to a little shop down a near street, where I bought an excellent piece of soap that is still in my possession.

Man has wrought many changes in Lourdes. Only the works of God remain unchanged. The Gave flows merrily on, singing its way to the sea. Round about are the eternal hills, which change not. The grotto in the rocks of Massabielle still looks out over the hurrying river, even as Our Lady, from her quiet niche, smiles down upon the ever flowing and ebbing multitude at her feet. How mighty has been that tide of pilgrimage since last I knelt before the statue of Our Lady there! Day by day, month by month, year by year, it keeps renewing itself, flowing ever onward like the leaping waters of the Gave.

I reached Lourdes on the eve of Saturday, May 10, and stayed there over Sunday. The great Swiss national pilgrimage was there, in eight trains; a pilgrimage from Metz in two trains; a mixed pilgrimage from Strassburg, in two trains; the seventeenth pilgrimage from Namur in three trains; the ninth national Bavarian pilgrimage in two trains; and the ninth Austrian, also in two trains. There were in all some fifteen thousand pilgrims, of many nations and many tongues. But one was the faith that drew them thither; one the devotion. And one was the hymn they sang in unison in the marvellous torchlight procession that night. I stood watching it as it wound its way down the great oval pathway through the meadow of Lourdes. The spire of the stately basilica that stands over the Grotto, the grand façade, and the Church of the Rosary beneath, were all ablaze. Then ten thousand pilgrims, a very torrent of moving lights, poured into the pathway, circled slowly round it, swaying and singing as they passed along. The sounds that rose upon the night air, under the listening stars, were as the voices of the sea.

A thought that saddens comes to me as I write these words, after three short months. Many, many of the men who walked side by side in that procession have ere now met face to face on European battlefields. Man is part beast, and part angel. The angel is of God, the beast of the earth, earthy. And the beast that is in man, true to its nature, fights its fellows; the angel can but weep over the fallen and the slain.

What a sight that was of sick and suffering humanity before the statue of Our Lady in the rocks of Massabielle! It seemed as if all the ills that poor human flesh is heir to were brought together there. One had not the heart to ask favours for oneself, so piteous was the spectacle of so much misery unrelieved. For out of the thousands that yearly seek a cure at Lourdes but few are made whole. Yet all are renewed in spirit, and strengthened to bear their ailments with Christian resignation. It is not that they want faith; it is rather that God does not will to free even those who have faith from all evil here below. "It is appointed unto man once to die." Through many tribulations, through the gates of death itself, we must enter into the Kingdom of God, Kingdom of endless ages, whereon, as St. Augustine so beautifully expresses it, "sits the untroubled light, and the peace of God that passeth all understanding." Meanwhile in patience we shall possess our souls.

A year ago one came to Lourdes, a girl from a town in France, sick beyond all human hope of recovery. She had a complication of maladies, including consumption in its last stage. Her doctor, an unbeliever, deemed it madness in her to undertake the long journey. But go she would. He told her, if she were cured, he himself would go with her next year to Lourdes. They were both of them there the Sunday I was there--she to thank Our Lady for the wondrous favour, he to ponder upon the superhuman power that wrought it, and to find, let us hope, healing and peace for his soul.

In a corner of France, amid the foothills and under the shadow of the Pyrenees, Lourdes lies sheltered with its holy shrine. Afar it lies from the madding strife that now ravages and reddens with blood many a fair field that was white unto harvest. Let us pray Our Lady that the war may soon be over--that He who chid the wild waves on the sea of Galilee may now stay the fierce onset of angry passions, and bring a great calm.

A FEW MORE STRAY LEAVES AND TRACES.

The passage from New York to Gibraltar took twelve days. The "Saxonia" is slow, but sure and steady. There was little sea-sickness, and less cause for it, but small-pox broke out in the steerage our first day at sea. The child--for a child it was that showed the dread symptoms--was at once placed in the isolation hospital. We all had to be vaccinated, and the "Saxonia" steamed into the harbour of Funchal, Madeira, flying the yellow-jack. There was, however, little fear of infection among our fellow-passengers in the first cabin, as became apparent the night before we made port. There was a dance on the deck, which we were all invited to join. Conspicuous on the list of dances that lay before each passenger as we sat down that evening to the dinner table was "the vaccination waltz!" Next morning a pathetic little wooden box, roughly carpentered, was landed at Madeira. It contained the remains of the little child which had died in port--not of small-pox, which had turned out after all to be chicken-pox--but of two hard-boiled eggs administered by a fond mother during convalescence. So at least the story ran on board ship, though I fancy it was just made up to free us the more completely from apprehension.

Madeira is one of the loveliest islands of the sea. The waters around it are of the deepest blue, and its sloping fields of the richest verdure. Funchal, the capital city, is on the shores of a winding bay. The houses spotlessly white, the roofs red-tiled, form a pleasing contrast of colour with the green of the fields and the tropical trees around about them. Madeira belongs to Portugal. The inhabitants are almost all of them Catholics, and very devout. The storm of persecution that so lately burst over the mother country has spared this distant daughter in her sea-girt home.

Quitting the boat at Gibraltar, and passing by rail through Spain and the south of France, I reached Rome before the middle of May. Rome is greatly changed since I knew it first, and changed, I am free to own, for the better. New streets have been opened, old ones straightened and widened, and all the streets are fairly well kept. The city has taken over the magnificent Villa Borghese, and turned it into a park, to which access is given, out of the very heart of Rome, from piazza, Barberini, along a broad highway, across the Pincian Hill. The deep valley beyond is bridged by a lofty embankment. No city is more favoured than Rome in its parks and fountains.

Rome is greatly changed, too, spiritually, and for the better. There is more of devotion in the churches; more of respect, or at least of outward respect, for the pilgrim in the streets. In Rome ecclesiastical things are pretty much as they have always been. There is a saying familiar to the theologian, _Communia vilescunt_--common things are held uncommonly cheap. What so common as the priest in Rome! None so poor as to do him reverence. Even a bishop on occasion does not fare much better. Apropos of this I have been told a story, which to quote the well-worn Italian saying, _Se non é vero, é ben trovato_--if not true, is a clever take-off, and may serve to point a moral.

Last winter there was a grand function in the Sixtine Chapel. The Holy Father was there, and the place was packed with people. They kept pressing forward in their eagerness to get near the Pope. At last the papal guard turned their backs to the multitude, and held them there. A belated Cardinal tried to force his way through, but couldn't. Taking one of the guard by the shoulder, he told him who he was and that he had to get by. "Oh, pardon me, your Eminence," cried the soldier, greatly taken aback, "I thought you were only a Bishop!"

The public consistory of May the 28th, viewed simply as a pageant, was well worth waiting for. Cardinals and bishops, in their scarlet and purple robes, lined the front seats, and the elect Cardinals, in gorgeous panoply, brought up the rear of a long procession. The ambassadors to the Holy See and the heads of the old noble families of Rome, were conspicuous in seats specially reserved for them. But what struck one as without parallel in so august an assemblage was this singular circumstance: a peasant from Riese sat in the throne of Peter, and three other peasants from Riese, two sisters and a niece, who bore about them all the marks of their peasant ancestry, occupied the place of honour in a tribune hard by. It was the apotheosis of democracy. The like had never been seen at the Papal Court, at least since the swineherd Sixtus, the fifth of that name, refused to receive, when dressed as a fine lady, the mother whom he afterwards welcomed when she came back to him in her peasant costume.

It is not easy to gain admittance to a papal consistory, and thereby hangs another tale. From immemorial time the noble Roman families have a sort of prescriptive right to a large number of admission tickets, which they use in part themselves, and in part, it is said, offer for sale in the hotels of Rome. These are eagerly bought up by tourists and travellers, who are largely Protestant. Hence it comes to pass that while a bishop often cannot get a ticket for an attendant priest, hundreds of Protestants and unbelievers hold prominent places at the consistory. The story is of the time when Pasquino (whence our English "pasquinade") entertained the Romans with his clever satirical skits. They took the form of cartoons, and were placed during the night at the foot of a statue to which all Rome was wont to take its way to amuse itself of a morning. After one of the public consistories, this is what greeted the eye of Rome. Two young men are hurrying to the Vatican. Some curious passer-by bids them the time of day, and would know why they hasten so. "We are on our way," they say, "to the Vatican, to the consistory." "But where is the use of your going; you can't get in." "Oh, that's all right," rejoin the confident pair, "we turned Protestant yesterday!"

On leaving Rome I visited Assisi, fraught with memories of St. Francis and St. Clare, Loreto, also, with its Holy House, and from Ancona crossed to Tersatto, near Fiume, where the Angels first set down the House of the Virgin when they came with it over the sea. I recrossed the Adriatic to Venice in an Austrian boat. Four of us slept in one small stateroom, packed like sardines. I could barely squeeze into my berth, and passed the night in dread lest the big burly German (known to be such by his gutturals) who occupied the upper berth should fall through and quite flatten me out. My sympathies have always been with the under dog, and henceforth will be more than ever--for I was the under sardine!

We came to Venice in the early morning when the newly risen sun had turned everything into gold. There she sat a queen upon the waters. Small wonder that one Joseph Sarto should have pined, and pines still, in his prison-palace of the Vatican, for this old home of his on the sea, which it is his inclement destiny never more to set eyes on. Venice is a city without streets. Instead there are canals and corridors--canals where glide the swan-like gondolas, and corridors between the houses, so narrow that people living on opposite sides may shake hands across.

While I sat writing the last paragraph the life of Pope Pius the Tenth was slowly ebbing away. He was passing to the better world, where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. He had fought the good fight, he had kept the faith. He had laboured while yet it was day, knowing that the night cometh when no one can labour more. His was a truly simple and apostolic life. He had a single eye to the glory of God and the good of his fellow-man. If ever there was one who could say that he sought not the office, but that the office sought him, he was the Pope whose loss we mourn. He has done an enduring work for God and the Church, and has left an inspiring example of a life untainted with worldliness and fragrant with faith and good works. _Eternal rest grant to him, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon him!_

I spent a night in Domodossola just beyond the beautiful Lago Maggiore, in the Italian Alps. Here the Rosminian Fathers have a college for boys, largely attended. A unique feature of the museum is a room filled with labelled specimens of the different kinds of stone taken from the great Simplon tunnel--an almost endless variety. Beyond the Simplon, on the Swiss side, the train, which is driven by electricity, passes along the side of a precipitous mountain. An Alpine river winds its way two thousand feet below. From the window of the train I caught a glimpse of a flying aeroplane, about midway down. Far beyond on the other side the eye rested on great fields of untrodden snow. The valleys of Switzerland are for the most part so narrow that it is easy to get a good view of the wonderful mountain scenery.

At Berne I had just time to pay a visit to my old acquaintances--I dare not say friends--the bears. There are as many as seven of them now in the underground enclosure across the Aar river, the cubbies that I saw on my first visit having grown into bears. I bought one or two specimens of the beast in wood, and saw many more that would have made interesting additions to my former repertoire--bears painting, bears playing cards, bears playing the piano, bears working in wood, bears smoking long German pipes, bears nursing sick bears, and bears rejoicing in the birth of cubbies!

From Berne I passed to Strassburg, from Strassburg along the banks of the Rhine to Cologne, and from Cologne to Aix-la-Chapelle, known to me from schooldays as a place where peace treaties were signed. Peace then brooded on the land, a land of plenty, smiling with promise of a rich harvest. But on every hand were soldiers, and the whole nation appeared to be cast in a military mould. Whatever the outcome of the terrible war into which Europe is plunged to-day, the future historian will record and lay due stress on this significant fact, that Germany led the world in war-like preparation, and that other nations did but strive to keep pace with her.

The return voyage, on the Empress of Britain, was almost without incident. One day of storm we had, in mid-ocean, when our big ship was tossed about and great seas broke over her. A day or two later, on the banks of Newfoundland, an iceberg was sighted almost directly ahead. It looked ghostlike as it loomed up out of the haze, and the air for miles around was chill as winter. I left the ship at Rimouski, about sunrise of a July morning, close to the spot where her sister ship went down a few weeks before with almost every soul on board. At Rimouski I took an eastbound train to my old home, feeling, as I never felt before, the force of Sir Walter's undying lines:

Breathes there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand.

[Transcriber's note: The material in French without accents is as printed, as are any odd and unusual spellings.]