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persons who had forgotten to read after they had learned were proved, in order to meet the evidence of those who appeared to remember that Isaac's learning had reached thus far.

Many witnesses swore that the soldier in no way resembled Pierre Mêge in stature, features, complexion, or voice. The attacks upon Monsieur Rolland were resumed. He was denounced as a mendacious conspirator, in league with the other members of the family. The evidence in the depositions of Monsieur de Caille was ridiculed as being utterly worthless, coming from a man who had fled from his country as a heretic, and it was urged that the majority of his relations were not to be believed for similar reasons.

On the other hand, Monsieur de la Blinière's witnesses knew nothing whatever of the numerous peculiarities said to have been visible in and upon Isaac le Brun. According to their testimony, Monsieur de Caille's son had fine eyes, a well-formed nose, a small rosy mouth, a remarkably well-formed face, and a beautiful complexion. His figure was slight, but firmly and compactly built. He carried himself well, and had a most pleasing expression of countenance. His manners were winning, and his disposition kind. He was a man of high character, and extremely liberal-minded. He was well informed, full of wit and vivacity, yet at the same time gentle and unassuming. He spoke French perfectly, and was devoted to the exercise both of body and mind. He was much attached to his own profession of faith was pure in morals, fair in his dealings. In fine, he was a scholar, gentleman, and Christian.

Four of Isaac's tutors deposed to his having learned to read and write, and to his having studied Greek and Latin at college. Duly attested certificates, signed by the French Minister at Geneva, from five different professors, set forth that Isaac le Brun had attended their lectures at Geneva during three years. As it had been urged that he had forgotten to read and write, Monsieur de la Blinière pointed out that the soldier had denied ever having been able to learn to write.

With regard to the proofs of Isaac de Castellane's death, certificates were produced from the Magistrates at Vevay, establishing the fact. Other depositions were also forwarded, after having been

authenticated by the authorities of Berne and the Marquis de Puysieux, the French ambassador in Switzerland; among others, those of Monsieur le Sage, the minister who attended Isaac le Brun on his deathbed; of Monsieur Second, in whose house he lived; of the doctor, surgeon, and chemist who attended him; of the watcher who had been placed over his body, and who had laid it out; of the undertaker who had prepared the corpse for burial, and placed it in the coffin; and of several others who had attended the sick man during his last illness, and who had subsequently followed him to the grave. Monsieur de Caille further obtained the evidence of twenty-nine other witnesses, who had known the deceased at Lausanne, and who gave an accurate description of the illness that had eventually carried him off, and of his general appearance. Three of Isaac le Brun's aunts gave similar evidence; and the vicar of the parish of St. Louis at Grenoble deposed that he was present when Madame Rolland received the news of her nephew's death in 1696. This was the principal evidence brought forward in proof of the death of Isaac le Brun, and certainly most people would consider it sufficiently convincing, and in the end it proved so. Other proof, however, was forthcoming to show who the soldier in reality was, and this was subsequently placed beyond doubt. Honorade Venelle came forward and swore unhesitatingly that Pierre Mêge was her husband, whom she had married in 1685, and with whom she had cohabited until 1699. Her reason for keeping so rigid a silence since she first heard of her husband's villainous proceedings were perfectly valid and comprehensible. Had she attempted to verify his statements, her position would have been that of particeps criminis; on the other hand, had she given information as to who he really was, she would in effect have been signing his death-warrant, and she determined to let things take their course, the more so as her position as a married woman was not imperiled until the marriage of Pierre Mêge with Mademoiselle de Serri. Her evidence, coupled with that of many other witnesses, established the identity of the soldier as Pierre Mêge, who had enlisted seven times in the French army, against whom a warrant for violence against a clergyman had been issued, who had three times abjured his

religion, and who had been guilty of many other vile actions.

In this extraordinary case, which stands at the head of the French causes célèbres, no less than three hundred and ninetyfour witnesses, who had almost all seen and known Isaac de Castellane, were examined on the impostor's side. Of these, one hundred and ten either swore positively that the soldier was the son of Monsieur de Caille, or that they believed him to be such. Of these one hundred and ten witnesses, twenty said that the impostor resembled Madame Rolland, although not the slightest likeness existed between the two. Sixteen were convicted of falsehood out of their own mouths. One extraordinary fact was elicited during the trial: the journal of Monsieur Bourdin, Isaac de Castellane's maternal grandfather, contained an entry of the names of the five different nurses who had attended his grandson when a child, and these did not correspond with either the Christian or surnames of those examined during this trial; and it was proved that one of them, Martine Esprit, could only have been seven years old at the very time she swore she suckled Isaac le Brun.

On behalf of Madame Rolland, one hundred and eighty-four witnesses were examined-of these thirty-eight swore that the soldier was not the son of Monsieur de Caille; seven, at the Toulon trial, swore the same. All these witnesses agreed with those at Lausanne and Vevay in their description of Isaac le Brun. One hundred and thirty witnesses swore that the soldier was Pierre Mêge, whom they had known -some fifteen, others twenty, and again, others twenty-five years. At the Toulon trial, nine gave similar evidence. They showed themselves to be thoroughly conversant with his history to the most minute details. Many of his comrades and superiors in the army never doubted for a moment that he was the same Pierre Mêge; in fact, on all sides, from those who had known him well, and those who knew but little of him, the cry

NEW SERIES.-VOL. XVI., No. 1.

came that he was no one else but Pierre Mêge.

It is to be observed that the whole of the members of the family of De Caille rejected the soldier as an impostor from the very first. Only one relation, who had never seen Isaac le Brun, said he believed in him; but this statement was afterwards withdrawn. Among the witnesses of the soldier, there were twenty beggars subsisting on charity at Manosque, and sixty workmen and peasants who were unable to read and write. Among the witnesses on behalf of Madame Rolland, more than two-thirds were burgesses, lawyers, gentlemen or clergymen, many of whom had studied with Isaac le Brun.

On the 17th March, 1712, thirteen years from the date upon which the impostor first came forward, the supreme court of Paris decided that he was not the son of Monsieur de Caille, but was Pierre Mêge. He was again thrown into prison, but the unfortunate Mademoiselle Serri, with whom the impostor had gone through the ceremony of marriage after the absurd decision of the Provençal Parliament, commenced a suit, conducted by Monsieur Jylouin, in which she sought to obtain an order to oppose the judgment which made her marriage illegal. This delayed a prosecution for bigamy against Mêge, which was to have been at once proceeded with; but before Mademoiselle Serri's case had been terminated, death had summoned him before a higher tribunal.

Although it is difficult, within the prescribed limits of a magazine article, to give a faithful account of such a protracted trial, we have endeavored to do so. Much of the evidence has, of course, necessarily been omitted, together with the able speeches of the counsel, but enough has been said to show that boldness and effrontery are principally needed for successful imposture, and that the clearest and most unimpeachable evidence is sometimes scarcely sufficient to combat successfully the fraudulent designs of those who possess such qualities.

7

Macmillan's Magazine.

FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE.

IN MEMORIAM.

ON Friday, the fifth of April, a noteworthy assemblage gathered round an open vault in a corner of Highgate Cemetery. Some hundreds of persons, closely packed up the steep banks among the trees and shrubs, had found in that grave a common bond of brotherhood. I say, in that grave. They were no sect, clique, or school of disciples, held together by community of opinions. They were simply men and women, held together, for the moment at least, by love of a man, and that man, as they had believed, a man of God. All shades of opinion, almost of creed, were represented there; though the majority were members of the Church of England-many probably reconciled to that church by him who lay below. All sorts and conditions of men, and indeed of women, were there; for he had had a word for all sorts and conditions of men. Most of them had never seen each other before-would never see each other again. But each felt that the man, however unknown to him, who stood next him was indeed a brother, in loyalty to that beautiful soul, beautiful face, beautiful smile, beautiful voice, from which, in public or in secret, each had received noble impulses, tender consolation, loving correction, and clearer and juster conceptions of God, of duty, of the meaning of themselves and of the universe. And when they turned and left his body there, the world as one said who served him gallantly and long-seemed darker now he had left it but he had stayed here long enough to do the work for which he was fitted. He had wasted no time, but died, like a valiant man, at his work, and of his work.

He might have been buried in Westminster Abbey. There was no lack of men of mark who held that such a public recognition of his worth was due, not only to the man himself, but to the honor of the Church of England. His life had been one of rare sanctity; he was a philosopher of learning and acuteness, unsurpassed by any man of his generation; he had done more than any man of that generation to defend the Church's doctrines; to

recommend her to highly cultivated men and women; to bring within her pale those who had been born outside of it, or had wandered from it; to reconcile the revolutionary party among the workmen of the great cities with Christianity, order, law; to make all ranks understand that if Christianity meant any thing, it meant that a man should not merely strive to save his own soul after death, but that he should live here the life of a true citizen, virtuous, earnest, helpful to his human brethren. He had been the originator of, or at least the chief mover in, working men's colleges, schemes for the higher education of women, for the protection of the weak and the oppressed. He had been the champion, the organizer, the helper with his own money and time, of that coöperative movement-the very germ of the economy of the future-which seems now destined to spread, and with right good results, to far other classes, and in far other forms, than those of which Mr. Maurice was thinking five-and-twenty years ago. His whole life had been one of unceasing labor for that which he believed to be truth and right, and for the practical amelioration of his fellow creatures. He had not an enemy, unless it were here and there a bigot or a dishonest man-two classes who could not abide him, because they knew well that he could not abide them. But for the rest, those from whom he had differed most, with whom he had engaged, ere now, in the sharpest controversy, had learned to admire his sanctity, charity, courtesy-for he was the most perfect of gentlemen-as well as to respect his genius and learning. He had been welcomed to Cambridge, by all the finer spirits of the University, as Professor of Moral Philosophy; and as such, and as the parish priest of St. Edward's, he had done his work-as far as failing health allowed-as none but he could do it. Nothing save his own too-scrupulous sense of honor had prevented him from accepting some higher ecclesiastical preferment

which he would have used, alas! not for literary leisure, nor for the physical rest which he absolutely required, but

merely as an excuse for great and more arduous toil. If such a man was not the man whom the Church of England would delight to honor, who was the man? But he was gone; and a grave among England's worthies was all that could be offered him now; and it was offered. But those whose will upon such a point was law, judged it to be more in keeping with the exquisite modesty and humility of Frederick Denison Maurice, that he should be laid out of sight, though not out of mind, by the side of his father and his mother. Well: be it so. At least that green nook at Highgate will be a sacred spot to hundreds-it may be to thousands-who owe him more than they will care to tell to any created being.

It was, after all, in this-in his personal influence that Mr. Maurice was greatest. True, he was a great and rare thinker. Those who wish to satisfy themselves of this should measure the capaciousness of his intellect by studying-not by merely reading-his Boyle Lectures on the religions of the world; and that Kingdom of Christ, the ablest" Apology" for the Catholic Faith which England has seen for more than two hundred years. The ablest, and perhaps practically the most successful; for it has made the Catholic faith look living, rational, practical, and practicable, to hundreds who could rest neither in modified Puritanism or modified Romanism, and still less in skepticism, however earnest. The fact that it is written from a Realist point of view, as all Mr. Maurice's books are, will make it obscure to many readers. Nominalism is just now so utterly in the ascendant, that most persons seem to have lost the power of thinking, as well as of talking, by any other method. But when the tide of thought shall turn, this, and the rest of Mr. Maurice's works, will become not only precious but luminous, to a generation which will have recollected that substance does not mean matter, that a person is not the net result of his circumstances, and that the Real is not the visible Actual, but the invisible Ideal.

If any one, again, would test Mr. Maurice's faculty as an interpreter of Scripture, let him study the two volumes on the Gospels and the Epistles of St. John; and study, too, the two volumes on the Old Testament, which have been (as a fact) the means of delivering more than one or two from both the Rationalist and the

Mythicist theories of interpretation. mention these only as peculiar examples of Mr. Maurice's power. To those who have read nothing of his, I would say, "Take up what book you will, you will be sure to find in it something new to you, something noble, something which, if you can act on it, will make you a better man." And if any one, on making the trial, should say, "But I do not understand the book. It is to me a new world:" then it must be answered, "If you wish to read only books which you can understand at first sight, confine yourself to periodical literature. As for finding yourself in a new world, is it not good sometimes to do that ?-to discover how vast the universe of mind, as well as of matter, is; that it contains many worlds; and that wise and beautiful souls may and do live in more worlds than your own?" Much has been said of the obscurity of Mr. Maurice's style. It is a question whether any great thinker will be any thing but obscure at times; simply because he is possessed of conceptions beyond his powers of expression. But the conceptions may be clear enough; and it may be worth the wise man's while to search for them under the imperfect words. Only thus-to take an illustrious instance

has St. Paul, often the most obscure of writers, become luminous to students; and there are those who will hold that St. Paul is by no means understood yet; and that the Calvinistic system which has been built upon his Epistles, has been built up upon a total ignoring of the greater part. of them, and a total misunderstanding of the remainder; yet, for all that, no Christian man will lightly shut up St. Paul as too obscure for use. Really, when one considers what worthless verbiage men have ere now, and do still, take infinite pains to make themselves fancy that they understand, one is tempted to impatience when men confess that they will not take the trouble of trying to understand Mr. Maurice.

Yet, after all, I know no work which gives a fairer measure of Mr. Maurice's intellect, both political and exegetic, and a fairer measure, likewise, of the plain downright common sense which he brought to bear on each of so many subjects, than his Commentary on the very book which is supposed to have least connection with common sense, and on which common sense has, as yet, been seldom employed; namely, the Apocalypse of St. John. That his

method of interpretation is the right one can hardly be doubted by those who perceive that it is the one and only method on which any fair exegesis is possible namely, to ask, What must these words have meant to those to whom they were actually spoken? That Mr. Maurice is more reverent, by being more accurate, more spiritual, by being more practical, in his interpretation, than commentators on this book have usually been, will be seen the more the book is studied, and found to be, what any and every commentary on the Revelation ought to be-a mine of political wisdom. Sayings will be found, which will escape the grasp of most readers, as indeed they do mine, so pregnant are they, and swift revealing, like the lightning-flash at night, a whole vision: but only for a moment's space. The reader may find also details of interpretation which are open to doubt: if so, he will remember that no man would have shrunk with more horror than Mr. Maurice from the assumption of infallibility. Meanwhile, that the author's manly confidence in the reasonableness of his method will be justified hereafter, I must hope, if the Book of Revelation is to remain, as God grant it may, the political text-book of the Christian Church.

On one matter, however, Mr. Maurice is never obscure-on questions of right and wrong. As with St. Paul, his theology, however seemingly abstruse, always results in some lesson of plain practical morality. To do the right and eschew the wrong, and that not from hope of reward or fear of punishment-in which case the right ceases to be right-but because a man loves the right and hates the wrong: about this there is no hesitation or evasion in Mr. Maurice's writings. If any man is in search of a mere philosophy, like the Neo-Platonists of old, or of a mere system of dogmas, by assenting to which he will gain a right to look down on the unorthodox, while he is absolved from the duty of becoming a better man than he is and as good a man as he can be-then let him beware of Mr. Maurice's books, lest, while searching merely for "thoughts that breathe," he should stumble upon "words that burn," and were meant to burn. His books, like himself, are full of that Ovuós, that capacity of indignation, which Plato says is the root of all virtues. "There was something," it has been well said, “so awful, and yet so Christ-like in his awful

sternness, in the expression which came over that beautiful face when he heard of any thing base or cruel or wicked, that it brought home to the bystanders our Lord's judgment of sin."

And here, perhaps, lay the secret of that extraordinary personal influence which he exercised; namely, in that truly formidable element which underlaid a character which (as one said of him) "combined all that was noblest in man and woman; all the tenderness and all the strength, all the sensitiveness and all the fire of both; and with that humility which made men feel the utter baseness, meanness, of all pretension." For can there be true love without wholesome fear? And does not the old Elizabethan "My dear dread" express the noblest voluntary relation in which two human souls can stand to each other? Perfect love casteth out fear. Yes: but where is love perfect among imperfect beings, save a mother's for her child? For all the rest, it is through fear that love is made perfect; fear which bridles and guides the lover with awe--even though misplaced-of the beloved one's perfections; with dread-never misplaced-of the beloved one's contempt. And therefore it is that souls who have the germ of nobleness within, are drawn to souls more noble than themselves, just because, needing guidance, they cling to one before whom they dare not say or do, or even think, an ignoble thing. And if these higher souls are-as they usually are-not merely formidable, but tender likewise, and true, then the influence which they may gain is unbounded, for good—or, alas! for evilboth to themselves and to those that worship them. Wo to the man who, finding that God has given him influence over human beings for their good, begins to use it after a while, first only to carry out through them his own little system of the Universe, and found a school or sect; and at last, by steady and necessary degradation, mainly to feed his own vanity, and his own animal sense of power.

But Mr. Maurice, above all men whom I have ever met, conquered both these temptations. For, first, he had no system of the Universe. To have founded a sect, or even a school, would be, he once said, a sure sign that he was wrong and was leading others wrong. He was a Catholic and a Theologian, and he wished all men to be such likewise. To be so, he held,

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