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The Heroine of Vesuvius

A >> A. J. O\'Reilly >> The Heroine of Vesuvius



Alvira: The Heroine of Vesuvius

by Rev. A. J. O'Reilly, D.D.




Introduction




The Penitent Saints


The interesting and instructive character of this sensational narrative,
which we cull from the traditions of a past generation, must cover
the shortcomings of the pen that has labored to present it in an
English dress.

We are aware that the propriety of drawing from the oblivion of
forgotten literature such a story will be questioned. The decay of
the chivalrous spirit of the middle ages, and the prudish, puritanical
code of morality that has superseded the simple manners of our
forefathers, render it hazardous to cast into the hands of the present
generation the thrilling records of sin and repentance such as they
were seen and recorded in days gone by. Yet in the midst of a
literature professedly false, and which paints in fascinating colors
the various phases of unrepented vice and crime, without the redeeming
shadows of honor and Christian morality, our little volume must fall
a welcome sunbeam. The strange career of our heroine constitutes a
sensational biography charming and beautiful in the moral it presents.

The evils of mixed marriages, of secret societies, of intemperance,
and the indulgence of self-love in ardent and enthusiastic youth, find
here the record of their fatal influence on social life, reflected
through the medium of historical facts. Therefore we present to the
young a chapter of warning--a tale of the past with a deep moral for
the present.

The circumstances of our tale are extraordinary. A young girl dresses
in male attire, murders her father, becmes an officer in the army,
goes through the horrors of battle, and dies a SAINT.

Truly we have here matter sensational enough for the most exacting
novelist; but we disclaim all effort to play upon the passions, or
add another work of fiction to the mass of irreligious trash so powerful
in the employ of the evil one for the seduction of youth. In the
varied scenes of life there are many actions influenced by secret
motives known only to the heart that harbors them. Not all are
dishonorable. It takes a great deal of guilt to make a person as black
as he is painted by his enemies. Many a brave heart has, under the
garb of an impropriety, accomplished heroic acts of self-denial.

History is teeming with instances where the love of creatures, and even
the holier and more sublime love of the Creator, have, in moments of
enthusiasm, induced tender females to forget the weakness of their
sex and successfully fulfil the spheres of manhood. These scenes, so
censurable, are extraordinary more from the rarity of their occurence
than from the motives that inspire them, and thus our tale draws much
of its thrilling interest from the unique character of its details.

"But what a saint!" we fancy we hear whispered by the fastidious and
scrupulous into whose hand our little work may fall.

Inadvertently the thought will find a similar expression from the
superficial reader; but if we consider a little, our heroine presents
a career not more extraordinary than those that excite our surprise
in the lives of the penitent saints venerated on the alters of the
Church. Sanctity is not to be judged by antecedents. The soul
crimsoned with guilt may, in the crucible of repentance, become white
like the crystal snow before it touches the earth. This consoling
thought is not a mere assertion, but a matter of faith confirmed by
fact. There are as great names among the penitent saints of the
Church as amongst the few brilliant stars whose baptismal innocence
was never dimmed by any cloud.

Advance the rule that the early excesses of the penitent stains must
debar them from the esteem their heroic repentance has won; then we
must tear to pieces the consoling volumes of hagiology, we must drag
down Paul, Peter, Augustine, Jerome, Magdalen, and a host of illustrious
penitents from their thrones amongst the galaxy of the elect, and cast
the thrilling records of their repentance into the oblivion their early
career would seem to merit. If we are to have no saints but those of
whom it is testified they never did a wrong act, then the catalogue
of sanctity will be reduced to baptized infants who died before coming
to the use of reason, and a few favored adults who could be counted
on the fingers.

Is it not rather the spirit and practice of the Church to propose to
her erring children the heroic example of souls who passed through the
storms and trials of life, who had the same weaknesses to contend with,
the same enemies to combat, as they have, whose triumph is her glory
and her crown? The Catholic Church, which has so successfully promoted
the civilization of society and the moral regeneration of nations,
achieved her triumph by the conversion of those she first drew from
darkness. Placed as lights on the rocks of eternity, and shining on
us who are yet tossed about on the stormy seas of time, the penitent
saints serve us as saving beacons to guide our course during the
tempest. Many a feeble soul would have suffered shipwreck had it not
taken refuge near those tutelary towers where are suspended the memorial
deeds of the sainted heroes whose armor was sackcloth, whose watchword
the sigh of repentance poured out in the lonely midnight.

While Augustine was struggling with the attractions of the world which
had seduced his warm African heart, whose gilded chains seemed once
so light, he animated himself to Christian courage by the examples of
virtue which he had seen crowned in the Church triumphant.

"Canst thou not do," he said to himself, "what these have done? Timid
youths and tender maidens have abandoned the deceitful joys of time
for the imperishable goods of eternity; canst thou not do likewise?
Were these lions, and art thou a timid deer?" Thus this illustrious
penitent, who was one of the brightest lights of Christianity, has
made known to us the triumph he gained in his internal struggles by
the examples of his predecessors in the brave band of penitents who
shed a luminous ray on the pitchy darkness of his path.

The life of St. Anthony, written by St. Athanasius, produced such a
sensation in the Christian world that the desolate caverns of Thebias
were not able to receive all who wished to imitate that holy solitary.
Roman matrons were then seen to create for themselves a solitude in
the heart of their luxurious capital; offices of the palace, bedizened
in purple and gold, deserted the court, amid the rejoicings of a
festival, for the date-tree and the brackish rivulets of Upper Egypt!

Where, then, our error in drawing from the archives of the past another
beautiful and thrilling tale of repentance which may fall with cheerful
rays of encouragement on the soul engaged in the fierce combat with
self?

To us the simple, touching story of Alvira has brought a charm and a
balm. Seeking to impart to others its interest, its amusement, and
its moral, we cast it afloat on the sea of literature, to meet,
probably, a premature grave in this age of irreligion and presumptuous
denial of the necessities of penance.





Contents




Chapter I. Page
Paris One Hundred and Fifty Years Ago . . . . . . 5

Chapter II.
The Usurer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Chapter III.
A Mixed Marriage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Chapter IV.
A Youth Trained in the Way he should Walk . . . . 18

Chapter V.
Our Heroines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Chapter VI.
A Secret Revealed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Chapter VII.
Tears on Earth, Joy in Heaven . . . . . . . . . . 42

Chapter VIII.
Madeleine's Happy Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Chapter IX.
One Abyss Invokes Another . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Chapter X.
On the Trail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Chapter XI.
The Flight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Chapter XII.
Geneva . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Chapter XIII.
The Secret Societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Chapter XIV.
The Freemason's Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Chapter XV.
Tragedy in the Mountains . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

Chapter XVI.
A Funeral in the Snow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

Chapter XVII.
An Unwritten Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Chapter XVIII.
In Uniform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

Chapter XIX.
Remorse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

Chapter XX.
Naples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Chapter XXI.
Engagement with Brigands . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Chapter XXII.
The Morning After the Battle . . . . . . . . . . 156

Chapter XXIII.
Return--A Triumph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

Chapter XXIV.
Alvira's Confession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

Chapter XXV.
Honor Saved . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

Chapter XXVI.
Repentance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190

Chapter XXVII.
The Privileges of Holy Souls . . . . . . . . . . 199

Chapter XXVIII.
A Vision of Purgatory--A Dear One Saved . . . . . 202

Chapter XXIX.
Unexpected Meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

Chapter XXX.
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214





Chapter I.
Paris One Hundred and Fifty Years Ago.



"Paris is on fire!" "The Tuileries burnt!" "The Hotel de Ville in
ashes!" There are few who do not remember how the world was electrified
with the telegrams that a few years ago announced the destruction of
the French capital. It was the tragic finale of a disastrous war between
rival nations; yet the flames were not sent on high to the neutral
heavens to be the beacon of triumph and revenge of a conquering army,
but set on fire by its own people, who, in a fanaticism unequalled in
the history of nations would see their beautiful city a heap of ashes
rather than a flourishing capital in the power of its rightful rulers.
Fast were the devouring elements leaping through the palaces and superb
public buildings of the city; the petroleum flames were ascending from
basement to roof; streets were in sheets of fire; the charred beams
were breaking; the walls fell with thundering crash--the empress city
was indeed on fire. Like the winds unchained by the storm-god, the
passions of men marked their accursed sweep over the fairest city of
Europe in torrents of human blood and the wreck of material grandeur.

Those who have visited the superb queen of cities as she once flourished
in our days could not, even in imagination, grasp the contrast between
Paris of the present and the Paris of two hundred years ago. With a
power more destructive than the petroleum of the Commune, we must, in
though, sweep away the Tuileries, the boulevards, the Opera-House and
superb buildings that surround the Champs Elysees; on their sites we
must build old, tottering, ill-shaped houses, six and seven stories
high, confining narrow and dirty streets that wind in lanes and alleys
into serpentine labyrinths, reeking with filthy odors and noxious
vapors. Fill those narrow streets with a lazy, ill-clad people--men
in short skirts and clogs, squatting on the steps of antiquated cafes,
smoking canes steeped in opium, awaiting the beck of some political
firebrand to tear each other to pieces--and in this description you
place before the mind's eye the city some writers have painted as
the Paris of two hundred years ago.

But the old city has passed away. Like the fabulous creations we have
read of in the tales of childhood, palaces, temples, boulevards, and
theatres have sprung up on the site of the antiquated and labyrinthine
city. Under the dynasty of the Napoleons the capital was rebuilt with
lavish magnificence. Accustomed to gaze on the splendor of the sun,
we seldom advert to its real magnificence in our universe; but pour
its golden flood on the sightless eyeball, and all language would fail
to tell the impression upon the paralyzed soul. Thus, in a minor
degree, the emigrant from the southern seas who has been for years
amongst the cabins on the outskirts of uncultivated plains, where
cities were built of huts, where spireless churches of thatched roof
served for the basilicas of divine worship, and where public justice
was administered under canvas, is startled and delighted with the
refinement and civilization of his more favored fellow-mortal who lives
in the French capital.

Paris has been rudely disfigured in the fury of her Communist storm;
yet, in the invincible energy of the French character, the people who
paid to the conquering nation in fifteen months nine milliards of
francs will restore the broken ornaments of the empress city. From
the smoking walls and unsightly ruins of bureaux and palaces that wring
a tear from the patriot, France will see life restored to the emblem
of her greatness, the phoenix-like, will rise on the horizon of time
to claim for the future generation her position among the first-rate
powers of Europe.

To the old city we must wend our way in thought. Crossing the venerable
bridge at Notre Dame, we enter at once the Rue de Seine, where we
pause before the bank and residence of Cassier.





Chapter II.
The Usurer.




At a desk in the office we observe a lowsized, whiskered man.
Intelligence beams from a lofty brow; sharp features an aquiline nose
tell of Jewish character; his eye glistens and dulls as the heaving
heart throbs with its tides of joy and sorrow. Speculation, that
glides at times into golden dreams, brightens his whole features with
a sunbeam of joy; but suddenly it is clouded. Some unseen intruder
casts a baneful shadow on the ungrasped prize; the features of the
usurer contract, the hand is clenched, the brow is wrinkled, and woe
betide the luckless debtor whose misfortunes would lead him to the
banker's bureau during the eclipse of his good-humor!

Cassier was a banker by name, but in reality dealt in usurious loans,
Shylock-like wringing the pound of flesh from the victims of his
avarice. He was known and dreaded by all the honest tradesmen of the
city; the curse of the orphan and the widow, whom he unfeelingly drove
into the streets, followed in his path; the children stopped their
games and hid until he passed. That repulsive character which haunts
the evil-doers of society marked the aged banker as an object of dread
and scorn to his immediate neighbors.

In religion Cassier at first strongly advocated the principles of
Lutheranism; but, as is ever the case with those set adrift on the sea
of doubt, freed from the anchor of faith, the definite character of
his belief was shipwrecked in a confusion of ideas. At length he
lapsed into the negative deism of the French infidels, just then
commencing to gain ground in France. He joined them, too, in open
blasphemies against God and plotting against the stability of the
Government. The blood chills at reading some of the awful oaths
administered to the partisans of those secret societies. They proposed
to war against God, to sweep away all salutary checks against the
indulgence of passion, to level the alter and the throne, and advocated
the claims of those impious theories that in modern times have found
their fullest development in Mormonism and Communism.

Further on we shall find this noxious weed, that flourishes in the
vineyards whose hedges are broken down, producing its poisonous fruit.
But it was at this period of our history that he became a frequent
attendant at their reunions, returning at midnight, half intoxicated,
to pour into the horrified ears of his wife and children the issue of
the last blasphemous and revolutionary debate that marked the progress
and development of their impious tendencies.

No wonder Heaven sent on the Cassier family the curse that forms the
thrill of our tragic memoir.





Chapter III.
A Mixed Marriage.




The Catholic Church has placed restrictions on unions that are not
blessed by Heaven. Benedict XIV. has called them DETESTABLE. A
sad experience has proved the wisdom of the warning. When the love
that has existed in the blinding fervor of passion has subsided into
the realities of every-day life, the bond of nuptial duty will be
religion. But the conflict of religious sentiment produces a divided
camp.

The offspring must of necessity be of negative faith. When intelligence
dawns on the young soul, its first reasoning powers are caught in a
dilemma. Reverential and filial awe chains the child to the father
and chains it to the mother; but the father may sternly command the
Methodist chapel for Sunday service; the mother will wish to see her
little one worship before the alters of the Church. Fear or love wins
the trusting child, but neither gains a sincere believer.

See that young mother, silent and fretful; the rouge that grief gives
the moistened eye tells its own tale of secret weeping.

Trusting, confiding in the power of young love, attracted by the wealth,
the family, or the manners of her suitor, she allows the indissoluble
tie to bind her in unholy wedlock. Soon the faith she has trifled
with assumes its mastery in her repentant heart, but liberty is gone;
for the dream of conjugal bliss which dazzled when making her choice,
she finds herself plunged for life into the most galling and
irremediable of human sorrows--secret domestic persecution. Few brave
the trial; the largest number go with the current to the greater evil
of apostasy.

Cassier loved a beautiful Catholic girl named Madeleine. Blinded by
the stronger passion, he waived religious prejudice. He wooed, he
promised, he won. The timid Madeleine, beneath her rich suitor in
position, dazzled by wealth, and decoyed by the fair promises that
so often deceive the confiding character of girlhood, gave her hand
and her heart to a destiny she soon learned to lament.

Fancy had built castles of future enjoyment; dress, ornament, and
society waved their fascinating wings over her path. Unacquainted
with their shadowy pleasures, her preparations for her nuptials were
a dream of joy, too soon to be blasted with the realities of suffering
that characterize the union not blessed by Heaven. Amid the music
and flowers, amid the congratulations of a thousand admiring friends,
with heart and step as light as childhood, Madeleine, like victims,
dressed in flowers and gold, led to the alter of Jupiter in the
Capitol of old, was conducted from the bridal alter to the sacrifice
of her future joy. Story oft told in the vicissitudes of betrayed
innocence and in the fate of those who build their happiness in the
castles of fancy: like the brilliancy of sunset her moment of pleasure
faded; the novelty and tinsel of her gilded home lost their charm,
and the virtue of her childhood was wrecked on golden rocks. She no
longer went to daily Mass; her visits to the convent became less
frequent, her dress lighter; her conversation, toned by the ideas of
pride and self-love reflected from the society she moved in, was profane
and irreligious; and soon the roses of Christian virtue that bloom in
the cheek of innocent maidenhood became sick and withered in the heated,
feverish air of perverse influences that tainted her gilded home.

Sixteen years of sorrow and repentance had passed over Madeleine,
and found her, at the commencement of our narrative, the victim of
consumption and internal anguish, the more keen because the more secret.
The outward world believed her happy; many silly maidens, in moments
of vanity, deemed they could have gained heaven if they were possessed
of Madeleine's wealth, her jewels, her carriages, her dresses; but were
the veils that shroud the hypocrisy of human joy raised for the warning
of the uninitiated, many a noble heart like Madeleine's would show the
blight of disappointment, with the thorns thick and sharp under the
flowers that are strewn on their path. The sympathy of manhood, ever
flung over the couch of suffering beauty, must hover in sighs of
regret over the ill-fated Madeleine, whose discolored eye and attenuated
form, whose pallid cheek, furrowed by incessant tears, told the wreck
of a beautiful girl sinking to an early tomb.

Her children--three in number--cause her deepest anxiety; they are the
heroes of our tale, and must at once be introduced to the reader.





Chapter IV.
A Youth Trained in the Way He Should Walk.




To-morrow--
'Tis a period nowhere to be found
In all the hoary registers of time,
Unless, perchance, in the fool's calendar.
Wisdom disdains the word, nor holds society
With those who own it.
'Tis Fancy's child, and Folly is its father;
Wrought of such stuff as dreams are, and as baseless
As the fantastic visions of the evening.
--Coulton.


Like one of those rare and beautiful flowers found on the mountain-
side in fellowship with plants of inferior beauty, the heir of the
Cassier family is a strange exception of heroic virtue in the midst
of a school of seduction. The saints were never exotics in their own
circle. Their early histories are filled with sad records confirming
the prophecy of our blessed Lord: "The world will hate you because
it loves not me."

The student of hagiology recalls with a sight the touching fate of
a Dympna who was the martyred victim of a father's impiety; of a
Stanislaus pursued by brothers who thirsted for his blood; of a Damian
who nearly starved under his stepfather's cruelty; of martyrs led to
the criminal stone for decapitation by inhuman parents.

Louis Marie, the eldest of Cassier's children, was of a naturally good
disposition. Through the solicitations of his mother and the guidance
of an unseen Providence that watched over his youth, he was early
sent to the care of the Jesuits. Under the direction of the holy and
sainted members of this order he soon gave hope of a religious and
virtuous manhood. Away from the scoffs of an unbelieving father and
the weakening seductions of pleasure, he opened his generous soul to
those salutary impressions of virtue which draw the soul to God and
enable it to despise the frivolities of life.

The vacation, to other youths a time of pleasure, to Louis was tedious.
Though passionately attached to his mother, yet the impious and often
blasphemous remarks of his father chilled his heart; the levity with
which his sisters ridiculed his piety was very disagreeable; hence,
under the guidance of a supernatural call to grace, he longed to be
back with the kind fathers, where the quiet joys of study and solitude
far outweighed the short-lived excitement called pleasure by his
worldly sisters. This religious tendency found at last its consummation
in an act of heroic self-denial which leads us to scenes of touching
interest on the threshold of this extraordinary historical drama.

At the time our narrative commences Louis was seriously meditating
his flight from home and the world to bury himself in some cloister
of religion. His studies of philosophy and history had convinced
him of the immortality of the soul and the vanity of all human
greatness. In his frequent meditations he became more and more
attracted towards the only lasting, imperishable Good which the soul
will one day find in its possession. "Made for God!" he would say to
himself, "my soul is borne with an impetuous impulse towards him; like
the dove sent from the ark, it floats over the vast waters, and seeks
in vain a resting place for its wearied wing; it must return again to
the ark."

The history of the great ones of the world produced a deep impression
on Louis' mind. Emblazoned on the annals of the past he read the
names of great men who played their part for a brief hour on the stage
of life. They grasped for a moment the gilded bubble of wealth, of
glory, and power; but scarcely had they raised the cup of joy to their
lips when it was dashed from them by some stroke of misfortune or
death. The pageant of pride, the tinsel of glory, were not more
lasting than the fantastic castles that are built in the luminous
clouds that hang around the sunset.

At college Louis was called on with his companions to write a thesis
on the downfall of Marius. Nothing more congenial to his convictions
or more encouraging to the deep resolution growing in his heart could
be selected. The picture he drew from the sad history of the
conqueror of the Cimbri was long remembered among his school companions.

Marius was seven times Consul of Rome; in the hapless day of his
ascendancy he threatened to stain three-fourths of the empire with
human blood. Blasted in his golden dream of ambition, driven into
exile by victorious enemies, he was cast by a storm on the shores of
Africa, homeless and friendless; in cold and hunger he sought shelter
amidst the ruins of Carthage. Carthage, whose fallen towers lay in
crumbling masses around him, was once the rival city of imperial Rome
herself, and, under the able leadership of Hannibal, threatened to
wrest from the queen of the Seven Hills the rule of the world. Now
its streets are covered with grass; the wild scream of the bird of
solitude and the moanings of the night-owl mingle with the sobs of
a fallen demigod who once made the earth shake under his tyranny.

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