The Catholic World Volume Iii Part 154

In one of her letters, Mlle. Levin describes the impression which a visit to a Catholic convent had made upon her mind. She had entered into the services in the chapel like an artist: "I would gladly go there again, if it were only to hear the music, and breathe in the odor of the incense," said she. But the mortifications of the religious seemed to her more eccentric than touching; she pitied them for having to fulfil the functions of gardener and cook, to prepare medicines and feel the pulse of their patients. "Without exception their hands looked coa.r.s.e," she said, "and their masculine tread sounded like the tramp of a patrol." And yet later in life Rahel was to perform, voluntarily, the same work as these nuns, and moreover she had a true sentiment of piety, which sometimes rose to an expression of faith.

"In moments of suffering," she wrote, "how happy faith makes me feel!

I love to rest upon it as on a downy pillow."

We read these words so full of simple piety, with a full heart, thinking sadly how little a.s.sistance this woman would have needed to become an ardent convert to the true religion. It is really surprising that she should not have sought out Christianity.

"Never try to suppress a generous impulse, or to crowd out a genuine feeling," she wrote to a friend: "despair or discouragement are the only fruits of dry reasoning; examine yourself carefully, and dread above all things the decisions of wisdom unenlightened by the heart."

Rahel and Varnhagen had agreed to meet again one day; but absence is often fatal to the strongest ties, and more than once this one was on the point of snapping.

"A woman who has pa.s.sed thirty," says our author, "may well fear lest youth, proved by the parish register, should win the day against youth of mind and soul."

It would have been very hard to find a rival to a woman so gifted as Rahel; but the first moment of enthusiasm over, Varnhagen began to think that his betrothed had been very prompt in her acceptance of the promises by which he had bound himself when a young and inexperienced man; and perhaps his memory recalled certain confidences of ill-matched pairs, who had a.s.sured him that generosity is a snare.

"For nothing in the world, of course, would he have renounced this affection of which he was proud; but he thought that she would accept his fidelity without his name, and he presumed to offer his devotion in lieu of the projected union."

Rahel could not accept a compromise as humiliating to her heart as dangerous to her reputation. She refused it, but--and this was less dignified--she refused sadly and plainly to free Varnhagen from his engagement. This was what she wrote:

"Bitterness at least equals suffering, when you, the single, solitary soul who knows me thoroughly, would turn away from me, or what is the same thing, when you would be false to yourself, and forsake me: hard words, my friend, but none the less true. I must be severe to the only being who has given me a right to expect anything from him. In you alone had I hoped, and I think I should insult you in saying that I had ceased to hope."

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To this bitter trial was added another one, which was very severe, though merely connected with material matters, especially for a person who was no longer young. Half abandoned, and half _exploitee_ by her family, Rahel had become poor. Valiant and strong, she had long succeeded in hiding from her friends the privations which she imposed upon herself, in order to maintain her household properly. She had just lost her mother, and one of her brothers, who died blessing her for her devotion, and these afflictions must be added to the money troubles, which increased every day. Alas! there was no consolation in this distress, for Rahel could not say like the august daughter of a great king, "I thank G.o.d for two things; first, for having made me a Christian, and next, for having made me unhappy."

Economy was not her chief virtue, and kindness, that luxury which she could not live without, led her to deprive herself of the necessaries of life, in order that her servants might want for nothing. "It is mere selfishness," she said, laughing; "I prefer spoiling them to spoiling myself."

The misfortunes of war completed the ruin of her purse and her health.

She a.s.sisted her countrymen by collecting contributions, and when money failed, she paid with personal exertions, fulfilling the admirable precept, "When you have given everything, give yourself."

The vehemence of her feelings exhausted her strength, and her frail health gave way beneath the excess of privation and fatigue. She fell ill, and was forced to keep her bed for three months.

Her resources were exhausted, and poverty approached with great strides. She decided to ask one of her brothers, who was rich, to send her a little money; but he not only refused, but took a cruel pleasure in taunting the poor girl, with what he called her crazy liberality.

For six months the war intercepted all communications, so that she could receive no tidings of him whom she still called her betrothed.

But this anxiety was the last. On waking one morning Rahel saw a letter which had just been brought in, and by a sudden inspiration, worthy of one who had never despaired, she guessed what this note contained: "a living hope, which never dies out in valiant souls, cried out that at last she had grasped happiness;" and the hope proved true: ten days later she married August Varnhagen, who having recovered from his hesitation, fulfilled his vows with a good will.

"You will never repent marrying me," she wrote to him, with navete, a little while before her marriage; "Love me, or love me not, as G.o.d wills; whatever happens I shall be yours for ever, you can rely on me: I am constant, as you have been constant. Rahel shall never fail you."

Her husband was afterward made Prussian minister, and Rahel as amba.s.sadress was once more surrounded as in the pleasantest days of her youth.

She was sixty-two years old when the disease attacked her of which she died. Varnhagen never left her, or ceased trying to make her forget her sufferings by reading the books to her which she loved best; and Heinrich Heine, learning that she was ordered to apply fresh rose-leaves to her inflamed eyes, sent her his first poems, lying at the bottom of a basket of exquisite roses.

Madame von Varnhagen had always loved the Bible, and, especially, Jewess though she was, the New Testament. She was never tired of listening to the history of the sufferings and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. One day finding herself more feeble, she said, taking her husband's hand and pressing it on her heart: "I feel better, my friend. I have been thinking a long time of Jesus, and it seems as if I had never felt as at this moment how truly He is my brother, and the brother of all men. It has comforted me." ... These were her last words.

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Do these women explain _the women of our times_? It is at least disputable; but we must recognize in them three interesting characters. We will not try to compare them; the differences between them are self-evident; and certainly though Eugenie de Guerin, the Frenchwoman and the Catholic, played in a worldly sense the most obscure part, no person of elevated views can contest the fact that hers was the most beautiful life of the three.

From The Lamp.

HENRI PERREYVE.

The Church of France sustained a great loss when, in the flower of his age, Henri Perreyve was cut off. Had his life been prolonged he would doubtless have attained a high position in the diocese of Paris, and done a very great work. A memorial of him--for it can hardly be called a "Life"--has been recently given to the world by his friend and confidant, Pere Gratry of the French Oratory; and thus the record of this young priest is now made immortal by the eloquent pen of one of the greatest spiritual writers in France. Henri Perreyve was born in April, 1831, and died June, 1865. His was, therefore, but a brief life--brief, but brilliant, like a short, bright summer-day.

The comparison is not an inapt one. The life of this young man was, compared to that of the minority of his fellow-creatures, a bright and happy one. No great exterior sorrows met him during his earthly career; and for the interior, there could not be much real suffering for one who from his early childhood had given himself to G.o.d, and who followed the standard of his Divine Master with a courage that could not be dismayed, with an ardor which was never cooled. He was a son of Christian parents, who early discerned his genius, and gave no opposition to the workings of G.o.d's grace in him. He was educated at the Lycee St. Louis; but he did not distinguish himself there. He was, however, at the head of the catechism-cla.s.s in St. Sulpice; for the child's heart was given to G.o.d, and he could not devote himself ardently to secular studies until he had learnt to consecrate even them to the service of G.o.d. At twelve years old he made his first communion. This act, which is the turning-point in the life of so many, proved such to him. In after-years he thus described it:

"May 29, 1859.

"You know that I always date from my first communion the first call from G.o.d to the ecclesiastical state. This thought gives me happiness. I can recall now, as if it were yesterday, the blessed moment when, having received our Lord at the holy table, I returned to my place, and there kneeling on that red-velvet bench, which I can see now, I promised our Lord, with a movement of sincere affection to belong to him always, and to him only. I feel still the kind of certainty I had from that moment of being accepted. I feel the warmth of those first tears for the love of Jesus, which fell from my childish eyes; and the ineffable shrinking of a soul, which for the first time had spoken to G.o.d, had seen him and heard him.

Intimate and profound joy of the sacerdotal espousals!"

As years pa.s.sed on, he kept his faith with his Lord. Naturally seeking his friends from among those like-minded with himself, he became soon surrounded by and closely bound to some of the most remarkable and {846} devoted men of the day. The Pere Gratry was the guide of his youth; and among those who followed his direction were a group of young ardent men, burning to devote themselves to the cause of G.o.d and his Church. Meeting a little later on with the Pere Petetot, they became the foundation-stones of the newly-revived French Oratory of St. Philip Neri. Henri Perreyve was obliged, however, before long, by the feebleness of his health, to withdraw from the congregation; but he was ever linked to it by the ties of the closest affection. Pere Charles Perraud, one of the Oratorians, was throughout life his bosom friend. They learnt together and prayed together, and were called together to serve G.o.d in the priesthood. Charles Perraud was the first to attain this dignity; and on the occasion of his saying his first ma.s.s, Henri thus wrote to him.

"Hyeres, Dec. 16, 1857.

"May the Lord be with thee! These are the sacramental words of the deacon, the only ones I have the right of addressing to you, my dear friend and brother, before the holy altar. I address them to you with all the fulness of my heart, and with all the deep meaning that befits these holy words. Yes, may the Lord be with you, dear brother!

"With you this morning at the altar of your first ma.s.s, to accept your bridal promise, and reply to your perpetual vow by that reciprocal love which pa.s.ses all other love. With you during the whole of this great day, to maintain the perfume of celestial incense in your soul, and the odor of the sacrifice which has begun, but which--thanks be to G.o.d!--has no ending. With you to-morrow, to make you feel that joy in G.o.d has somewhat of eternity in it, and that it differs from the joys of earth because we can taste it constantly without ever exhausting it. With you when, soon after your holy ecstasy of joy, you will feel that you must be a priest for men; and you will go down from Mount Tabor to go to those who suffer, to those who are ignorant, to those who are hungering and thirsting for the true light and the true life. With you in your sorrows to console you; with you in your joys to sanctify them; with you in your desires to make them fruitful.

"'_Memor sit omnis sacrificii tui, et holocaustum tuum pingue fiat_.'

"With you, my Charles, if you are alone in life, if our friends.h.i.+p be taken from you, if you have to walk on leaning only on the arm of a Divine Friend.

"With you, young priest, with you growing old in the conflicts of the priesthood, and in the service of G.o.d and men. With you on the day of your death, which shall bring to your lips, by the hands of another, that same Jesus who has so often been carried to others by your trembling hands.

"O my friend! I gather up all that my heart can contain of happy desires, wishes, and hopes for you. I gather them all up in one single wish: May the Lord be with thee always!

"It will be the life of a holy priest on earth; one day it will be heaven.

"The Lord be with thee!

"My Charles, bless me! I embrace yon tenderly, and feel myself with you pressed against the Heart of the Divine Master, beloved for ever.

"Henri Perreyve."

Henri Perreyve was advancing rapidly toward manhood when the Providence of G.o.d threw him in the path of one who was to exercise a powerful influence over his future. While Henri was a boy at school.

Father Lacordaire held the pulpit of Notre Dame; and it might truly be said, "All Paris was moved." What those wonderful conferences did toward undoing the fatal spiritual havoc wrought at the Revolution, and in subsequent years, cannot be recorded in any mortal history. It was given to men to see somewhat of the result of the labor; but the seeds of eternal life are scattered broadcast by a preacher's hand, and fall hither and thither unknown to any but G.o.d.

Henri Perreyve, as a boy of thirteen, found his delight in listening to the conferences. Six years pa.s.sed by, and found him still the attentive disciple at the feet of the great master of minds at that period; but he was too diffident and retiring to seek a personal acquaintance. One day, however, a friend insisted on introducing him.

Father Lacordaire was busy, and the interview lasted but a moment; but Henri Perreyve resembled the ideal we may not unreasonably form of the young man on whom our Lord looked and loved. Nature had been prodigal of her gifts, and genius and innocence lent additional charm to his exterior beauty. Lacordaire's keen eye had discerned the treasures that could be developed in that ardent soul.

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