Sue Petigru Bowen - The Actress in High Life

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"A truly apostolic aim!" Lady Mabel exclaimed, looking triumphantly
round on her old follower.

The descending road here narrowed suddenly, and Moodie reined back his
horse, silent in the sad conviction that Lady Mabel had already got
beyond that half-way house between the region of evangelical purity
and idolatrous Rome.

In the narrow valley, overgrown with shrubs and brushwood at the foot
of the hill, they came suddenly on a large number of swine luxuriating
in the cool waters, or on the shady banks of a brook. The swine
vanished instantly amidst the thickets, though hundreds were still
heard grunting and squealing around them, and the travelers might have
taken them for wild denizens of the wilderness, had not a fierce growl
attracted their attention, and they saw on the opposite bank a man
reclining under a _carob_ tree, one hand resting on the neck of a huge
dog, who yet showed two savage rows of teeth, and fixed his vigilant
and angry eyes on the intruders. The wild air of the master delighted
Lady Mabel, for there was mingled with it a savage dignity as he
stretched his manly form on the wolf-skin spread out under him, and
gazed calmly on the party drawing near. While their horses stopped to
drink at the stream, they observed him narrowly--he receiving this
attention with stoic indifference. A long gun lay on the ground beside
him, and his garments, made chiefly of the dressed skins of animals,
defied brier or thorn.

"Are we on the road to Evora?" L'Isle asked, by way of opening a
parley; but the man merely waved his hand gently toward the hill and
path before them. Resolved to make him speak, L'Isle asked, "What game
have you killed to-day?"--for he saw some animal lying in the moss at
the foot of the tree. The hunter silently held up a lynx and an otter,
which he had lately snared, and seemed to forget the presence of
strangers in contemplating his game. Despairing of extracting a word,
the travelers rode on.

"What a silent, unsocial wretch!" Mrs. Shortridge exclaimed. "He seems
to prefer the company of a savage hound, and his dead game, to that of
living Christians."

"He thinks a heretic no Christian, if he thinks at all," said L'Isle;
and he called to the guide, to ask what this wild man was.

"He is a swine-herd."

"Indeed!" said Lady Mabel. "I took him for a bandit, or a bold hunter,
at least."

"But he is the swine-herd of the great monastery of the Paulists, who
own half the lands on the southern slope of Serra d'Ossa. He is a
matchless hunter too, spending fewer nights under a roof than on the
mountain-side, where all the game is as much his, as the swine he
keeps is the property of the good fathers. They have the best bacon in
all Portugal, and plenty of it, as many a poor man can tell; and they
know this man's value, for he were a bold thief that pinched the ear
of his smallest pig."

"As soon as I get back to Elvas," said Lady Mabel, "I will send Major
Warren to make his acquaintance. The major will be charmed with
him. For his ambition is to take all sorts of game, in every possible
way; and though I have, or might have had, the history of all his
hunts by heart, neither lynx or otter has yet figured in the scene.
You remember, Colonel L'Isle, how much satisfaction he expressed when
you lately hinted at the probability of our brigade finding itself in
the north of Portugal early in the coming campaign. I at first thought
that the soldier saw some military advantage in the movement, but
found it was only the sportsman's delight at the hope of visiting
Truzos Montes, and killing one of the few Caucasian goats that yet
linger on the most inaccessible heights there."

"No gamester," said L'Isle, "is more a slave to the dice. That at this
time a soldier should be so little 'lost in the world's debate' as to
be eager, above all things, to kill a goat!"

They had now reached a point which gave them a fine view of the
southern side of Serra d'Ossa, so different from the northern, being
fertile, and showing many a cultivated spot upon its lower slopes,
while the light, fleecy clouds, gathering before the gentle western
wind, now veiled and then revealed the overhanging dark blue ridge
that crowned the scene. The guide pointed out the broad possessions of
the great monastery of the Paulists. At a distance, on the right, rose
Evora Monte, built like a watch-tower on a lofty hill; and, to the
south, the monastic towers and Gothic spires of Evora, the city of
monks, raised high above the plain, could be seen from afar.

"Why," asked Mrs. Shortridge, "do these people always build their
towns on hills?"

"That is a true English question," answered L'Isle. "At home, in our
bleak northern climate, we naturally seek sheltered situations. These
people as naturally select an airy site, above the parching heat and
poisoned air of the valleys. In founding colonies in tropical
countries we English, and the Dutch, have constantly blundered, acting
as if still at home; and choosing low and pestilential spots,
establish only hospitals and graveyards where we meant to build towns;
while the Spaniards and Portuguese, from the instinct of habit, select
the most salubrious situations within their reach. Moreover, high
points are safer from attack, and stronger to resist an enemy; and the
Christians of the peninsula were taught by seven centuries of conflict
with the Moors, that the safety of a man's house is the first point,
its convenience the second. Now, we islanders have long been but a
half military people. Content with incuring the guilt of war abroad,
we have carefully abstained from bringing it home to our own doors."

"But we never wage any but just wars," said Lady Mabel.

"We, at least," said L'Isle, "always find some plausible grounds on
which to justify our wars--to ourselves."

They were now on the outskirts of the undulating plain, on which a
rich soil overlying the granite rocks extends from Evora southward to
the city of Beja. The signs of cultivation and population multiplied
as they went on. The fields became larger and more frequent; detached
farm houses were seen on either hand, and they fell in on the road
with many peasants riding large and spirited asses, or driving oxen
all light bays with enormous horns, and so sleek and well grown, that
the commissary gazed on them with admiring eye and watering mouth, and
pronounced them equally fit for the yoke or the shambles.

It was a relief to find themselves once more in a cultivated country,
and Lady Mabel gazed round, admiring the prospect. "There is," she
observed, "one drawback to the landscape. At home, one of the most
enlivening features in our rural scenes, are the white sheep scattered
on the hills, but here they are almost black."

"But the goats you see are generally white," answered L'Isle. "It is,
too, the more picturesque animal, and well supplies what is wanting in
the sheep."

Evora was at hand. L'Isle launched out into an erudite discourse on
the aqueduct of Sertorius, which, stretching its long line of arches
from the neighboring hills, was converging with their road to the
city. As they entered it he was giving Lady Mabel all the pros and
cons, as to whether it was really the work of that redoubtable Roman.
The commissary was luxuriously anticipating the shade and rest before
him, when to his surprise and regret, L'Isle led the party another
way, and halted them before a small but striking building, which here
crowned the aqueduct at its termination in the city.

"Look, Lady Mabel. Observe it well, Mrs. Shortridge. This castellum is
a miniature embodiment of Roman taste and skill in architecture. This
is no ruin calling upon the imagination to play the hazardous part of
filling up the gaps made by the hand of time. We see it as the Moor,
the Goth, the Roman saw it, save the loss of a few vases which adorned
the depressed parapet, and the scaling plaster which here and there
betrays that the builder used that cheap but immortal material, the
Roman brick."

Much did Lady Mabel admire this architectural gem, scarcely tarnished
by the elements in nineteen centuries, and much more would L'Isle have
found to say of it, when the commissary, impatiently fanning himself
with his hat, ventured to ask, "how much longer shall we stay broiling
in the noon-day sun, staring at this Roman sentry-box?"

"Sentry-box!" said Mrs. Shortridge, with a puzzled air, "were the
Romans a gigantic people?"

"There were giants in those days," said Lady Mabel, gravely, gazing on
the castellum. But a crowd of idlers and beggars began to collect
around the cavalcade, and turning, they rode off, and were soon
enjoying the shelter, if not the more substantial hospitality, of the
_Estalagem de San Antonio_.

CHAPTER X.

Tell me, recluse Monastic, can it be
A disadvantage to thy beams to shine?
A thousand tapers may gain light from thee:
Is thy light less or worse for lighting mine?
If, wanting light, I stumble, shall
Thy darkness not be guilty of my fall?

Make not thyself a prisoner, thou art free:
Why dost thou turn thy palace to a jail?
Thou art an eagle; and befits it thee
To live immured like a cloister'd snail?
Let toys seek corners: things of cost
Gain worth by view; hid jewels are but lost.

Francis Quarles.

In the afternoon, the commissary going out in search of the objects of
his journey, grain and bullocks for the troops, L'Isle strolled out
with the ladies to survey the curiosities of Evora, and Moodie
followed closely Lady Mabel's steps.

"If I am to play the part of _cicerone_," said L'Isle, "I will begin
by reminding you that the history of many races and eras is
indissolubly connected with the Peninsula, and especially the southern
part of it. Here we find the land of _Tarshish_ of Scripture, so well
known to the Phoenicians, who, in an adjacent province of Spain, built
another Sidon, and founded Cadiz before Hector and Achilles fought at
Troy.

"Yet they found the Celto-Iberian here before them--who after that
built Evora, according to Portuguese historians, some eight or ten
centuries before Christ. The Greeks, too, stretched their commerce and
their colonies to this land. The Carthaginians made themselves masters
of this country. The Romans turned them out, to give place in time to
the Vandals; who were driven over into Africa by the Goths--whose
dominion was, at the end of two centuries, overthrown by the Arabs;
who, after a war of seven centuries, were expelled in turn by the
descendants of their Gothic rivals. The land still shows many traces
of these revolutions. In the neighborhood of this city the rude altar
of the Druid still commemorates the early Celt. The majesty of the
Roman temple here forms a singular contrast with the delicacy of the
Arabian monuments, and the Gothic architecture with the simplicity of
the modern edifices."

"A truly Ciceronian introduction to your duties as _cicerone_," said
Lady Mabel. "But I have yet to see much that you describe so
eloquently. To my eye the most striking feature of Evora at this day
is its ecclesiastical aspect. It is full of churches, chapels, and
monkish barracks, and seems to be held by a strong garrison of these
soldiers of the Pope."

"Baal's prophets are four hundred and fifty men," said old Moodie, in
loud soliloquy behind.

"I have often heard the Pope called Antichrist, but never knew him
dubbed Baal before," said Lady Mabel. "Although not one of his flock,
I cannot but feel a deep interest in the head of the Latin Church, now
that the venerable old man is so shamefully treated; carried off and
kept a prisoner in France, to be bullied, threatened, and cajoled,
with a view to appropriate the papal influence to the furtherance of
this Corsican's ambition."

"You had better leave all those feelings to his own flock, my lady."

"Is it possible, Moodie," Lady Mabel retorted, "that you do not know
that we are on the Pope's side in this quarrel? We are bound to
sympathize with him, not only in politics but in religion, against his
unbelieving enemies. We must forget all minor differences, and think
only of the faith we hold in common. Even you must admit that it is
better to see the Almighty dimly through mists and clouds, or even
though our view be obstructed by a crowd of doubtful saints, than to
turn our backs on the Christian Godhead, and deny his existence like
these godless French. I assure you I have become a strong friend to
the Pope."

"The more is the pity," groaned Moodie. "But what is written is
written."

"I know, Moodie, that you believe that we who have deserted the Kirk
of Scotland, and crossed the border in search of a church, have
already traveled a long way toward Rome."

"About half-way, my lady. The church of England is no abiding place,
but merely an inn on that road."

"Why," exclaimed Mrs. Shortridge, "is Moodie so much dissatisfied with
our church? For my part it does not seem natural to me for genteel
people to go any where else."

"You may find, madam," said Moodie, "a great many genteel people going
some where else. Gentry is no election to grace."

Mrs. Shortridge resented the insinuation by indignant silence; but
Lady Mabel, who had her own object in exasperating Moodie's sectarian
zeal, now asked him: "What is the last symptom of backsliding you have
seen in me?"

"It seems to me, my lady, that you are getting strangely intimate with
the Romish faith and rites, for one who does not believe and practice
them. It is a sinful curiosity, like that of the children of Israel,
which first made them familiar with the abominations among their
neighbors, then led them to practice the idolatries they had
witnessed."

"But may there not be something sinful, Moodie, in denouncing the
errors and corruptions of the Romanists, without having thoroughly
searched them out?"

"We know the great heads of their offense--their perversion of gospel
truth--their teaching for doctrine the commandments of men. There is
no need to trace every error through all its dark and crooked
windings. Truth is one: that God has allotted to his elect. Errors are
manifold, and sown broadcast among the reprobate."

"Still it must matter much what degree and kind of error falls to our
lot," Lady Mabel suggested.

"Perhaps so," Moodie answered, with doubting assent. "Yet if we are
not in the one true path, it may matter little which wrong road we
travel."

"Well, Moodie," said she, "however much you may narrow down your
Christian faith, you shall not hedge in my Christian charity, and
deprive me of all sympathy for the Pope in this his day of
persecution."

"Whatever the holy father's errors may have been," said L'Isle, "we
may now say of him, a prisoner in France, what was said of Clement the
Seventh, when shut up in the Castle of St. Angelo, '_Papa non potest
errare_.'"

"That is Latin, Moodie," said Lady Mabel, "and to enlighten your
ignorance it may be rendered, 'The Pope cannot err.'"

"Why that is nothing but the doctrine of the Pope's infallibility,"
exclaimed Moodie, indignantly; "and saying it in Latin cannot make it
true." And he dropped behind the party.

Gazing on the number of religious houses and habits around them, Lady
Mabel said: "Monastic life must hold forth strong allurements. The
monks seem to find it easy to recruit their ranks."

"Many motives combine to draw men into the church," L'Isle
answered. "Devotion may be the chief; but, in this climate and
country, the love of ease, and the want of hopeful prospects in
secular life, exercise great influence. Moreover, one monk, like one
soldier, serves as a decoy to another. Did you ever see a recruiting
sergeant, in all his glory, among a party of rustics at a village
alehouse? How skillfully he displays the bright side of a soldier's
life, while hiding every dark spot. The church has many a recruiting
sergeant, who can put the best of ours to shame. Many a recruit, too,
like our young friar, is caught very young."

They had now turned into another street, and L'Isle, stopping the
party, pointed out a large building opposite to them.

"What a curious mixture of styles it presents," said Mrs. Shortridge.

"What a barbarous mutilation of a work of art," exclaimed Lady Mabel.

"This is, or rather was," said L'Isle, "the temple of Diana, built
before the Christian era, perhaps while Sertorius yet lorded it in the
Peninsula, and made Evora his headquarters. The architect," continued
he, looking at it with the eye of a connoisseur, "was doubtless a
Greek. Time, and the mutilations and additions of the Moor, have not
effaced all the beauty of this structure, planned by the genius and
reared by the hands of men who lived nineteen centuries ago. The
rubble work and plaster wall that fills the space between those
columns, so requisite in their proportions--the pinnacles which crown
the structure in place of the entablature which has been destroyed,
are the work of the Moors, who strove in vain to unite in harmony
their own style of building with that of their Roman predecessors.
Enough remains to show the chaste, beautiful and permanent character
of the edifices of that classic age."

After gazing long with deep interest on this monument of the palmy
days and wide-spread sway of the Roman, Lady Mabel said: "Let us see
if there be not still left within the building some remains of a piece
with so noble an exterior."

"Unhappily," answered L'Isle, "all is changed there. Moreover, though
the sacrifices are continued, they are no longer conducted with the
decorum of the heathen rites. The temple of the chaste goddess is now
the public shambles of the city, defiled throughout by brutal
butchers, with the blood and offals of the slaughtered herd."

"Is it possible!" Lady Mabel exclaimed. "Have these people sunk so
low? Is so little taste, learning, and reverence for high art left
among them, that they can find no better use for this rare memorial of
the past."

"No people have proved themselves so destitute of taste, and of
reverence for antiquity, as the Portuguese," replied L'Isle. "They
seem to have found it a pleasure, or deemed it a duty, to erase the
footprints of ancient art. Monuments of all kinds, beautiful and rare,
and but lightly touched by the hand of time, have been ruthlessly
destroyed here. To give you a single instance: A gentleman of the
family of the Mascarenhas, who had traveled in Italy, and acquired a
taste for the arts, collected from different parts about the town of
Mertola, twelve ancient statues, with a view to place them on
pedestals in his country-house. But he dying before completing his
intention, these admirable productions of Roman art, the venerable
representations of heroes and sages, were hurled into a lime kiln to
make cement for the chapel of St. John. And such acts of Vandalism
have been perpetrated throughout Portugal."

"The barbarians!" exclaimed Lady Mabel. "The ignorance they condemn
themselves to, is scarce punishment enough for the offence."

"It is difficult to say how much they have destroyed," continued
L'Isle. "But, beside the voice of history, proofs enough remain that
Evora was, in the days of Sertorius, of Caesar, and in after-times, a
favorite spot with the Romans. This temple before us, mutilated as it
is, and the aqueduct, though repaired in modern times, are still
Roman; and no ancient monument in Italy is in better preservation than
the beautiful little castellum which crowns its termination. Even
where Roman buildings have been destroyed we still see around us the
stones with ancient and classic inscriptions built into new walls. The
plough, too, of the husbandman still at times turns up the coins of
Sertorius, bearing a profile showing the wound he had received in his
eye, while the reverse represents his favorite hind leaning against a
tree."

"How completely do these things carry us back to ancient times, and
make even Plutarch's novels seem verities of real life," said Lady
Mabel. "These same Romans, whom we read of and wonder at, have indeed
left behind them, wherever they came, foot-prints indelibly stamped on
the face of the country."

"They did more," said L'Isle, "wherever civilization extends, they
still set their marks upon the minds of men."

"How barbarous seem the Moorish buildings, which we still see here and
at Elvas," said Lady Mabel, "compared with these monuments of a yet
earlier day."

"The Moors had a style of their own," said L'Isle. "Indifferent to
external decoration, they reserved all their ingenuity for the
interior of their edifices. Stimulated by a sensuous religion and a
luxurious climate, they there lavished whatever was calculated to
delight the senses, and accord with a sedentary and voluptuous life.
They sought a shady privacy amidst sparkling fountains, artificial
breezes, and sweet smelling plants; amidst brilliant colors and a
profusion of ornaments, seen by a light sobered from the glare of a
southern sun. Numberless were the luxurious palaces the Moors reared
in Portugal and Spain. The Alhambra yet stands a model of their
excellence in the arts; although many of its glories have departed,
its walls have become desolate, and many of them fallen into ruin,
though its gardens have been destroyed, and its fountains ceased to
play. Charles V. commenced a palace within the enclosure of the
Alhambra, in rivalry of what he found there. It stands but an arrogant
intrusion, and is already in a state of dilapidation far beyond the
work of the Arabs. In them the walls remain unaltered, except by
injuries inflicted by the hand of man. The colors of the painting, in
which there is no mixture of oil, preserve all their brightness--the
beams and wood work of the ceilings show no signs of decay. The art of
rendering timber and paints durable, and of making porcelain mosaics,
arabesques, and other ornaments, began and ended in western Europe
with the Spanish Arabs. But perhaps the most curious achievement
attributed to them is, that spiders, flies, and other insects, shunned
their apartments at all seasons."

"What!" exclaimed Lady Mabel, "had they attained that perfection in
the art of building? Could they exercise those hordes of little
demons, lay a spell upon them and turn them out of doors? Had you told
me this yesterday I would have been less impressed by it. But, after
last night's ordeal, I venerate the Moor. Almost I regret the
expulsion of his cleanly superstition, since it has carried with it
into exile so rare an art."

Mrs. Shortridge, too, seemed fully to appreciate the value of the lost
art, and said, "these Moors must indeed have been a very comfortable
people."

"And they crowned their comfort in this world," said L'Isle, "by
inventing an equally comfortable system for the next."

"Is it not strange," said Lady Mabel, gazing on the building before
them, "that the production of two races, each so skillful, should be
so utterly incompatible. Classic and Saracenic art, both beautiful,
united make a monster."

"Not so strange," L'Isle answered, "as the simplicity of the
Mohammedan faith, amidst all that is fantastic in arts and letters--a
grotesque architecture, a wondrous alchemy, the extravagant in poetry
and the supernatural in fiction; or the purity of classic art,
characterized by simplicity and proportion, yet drawing its
inspiration from a wild and copious mythology, made up of the sportive
creations of fancy."

"They were a wonderful people, these Romans, as even this obscure
corner of Europe can witness," said Lady Mabel, her eyes dwelling on
the beautiful colonade, and tracing out the exquisite symmetry of the
shafts, and the rich foliage of the Corinthian capitals.

"Were these Romans Christians?" asked Moodie, who had hitherto looked
on in silence.

"No," she answered, "they worshipped many false gods."

"Then they were just like all the Romans I have known," said he dryly,
and turned his back on the temple.

"Come," said Mrs. Shortridge, "let us take Moodie's hint, and look for
something else worth seeing."

As they continued their walk, L'Isle remarked, "In many a place in the
peninsula we find a Roman aqueduct, a Moorish castle, and a Gothic
cathedral standing close together, yet ages apart. How much of history
is embraced in this? We have just been gazing upon the mouldering
remains of two phases of civilization, which were at their height,
one, while our forefathers were yet heathen and almost savage, the
other, while they were but emerging from a rude barbarism. We should
never forget that this peninsula was the high road which arts and
letters traveled on their progress into Western Europe, and to our own
land."

"We are much indebted to letters and the arts for the unanimity with
which they came on to us; for certainly," said Lady Mabel, looking
round her, "little of either appears to have loitered behind. Every
object around us makes the impression of a country and a people who
have seen better days; and you cannot help wondering and fearing where
this downward path may end."

"The history of humanity is not always the story of progress," said
L'Isle; "one nation may be like a young barbarian, his face turned
toward civilization, gazing on it with dazzled but admiring eyes;
another, a scowling, hoary outlaw, turning his back on human culture
and social order."

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