Cet orgue qui se tait, ce silence pieux, CHAPTER VII. SOLEMNITY OF CORPUS CHRISTI. CHRISTIAN festivals are not like the ceremonies of paganism. We do not drag an ox-god or a sacred goat in triumph; neither are we obliged, under pain of being torn to pieces, to adore a cat or crocodile, or to roll drunk in the streets, committing all sorts of abominations in honor of Venus, Flora, or Bacchus. In our solemnities all is essentially moral. If the Church has excluded the dance from them, it is because she is aware of the many passions that are disguised under this apparently innocent amusement. The God of the Christians is satisfied with the emotions of the heart and with the uniformity of sentiment which springs from the peaceful reign of virtue in the soul. What pagan festivity can be compared to the solemnity on which we commemorate the eucharistic institution? As soon as the morning star announces the festival of the King of the Universe, all the houses display their gold and silk embroidery, the streets are all covered with flowers, and the bells De Fontanes, Le Jour des Morts. La Harpe pronounced these twenty lines to be as beautiful a specimen of versification as could be found in the French language. We may add that they give a most faithful description of the Christian sacrifice. See note MM. 2 In some countries, however, it is still customary to introduce the dance in religious ceremonies, as in South America, where the aborigines converted to the faith are remarkable for their innocence. This practice was no doubt borrowed from Spain, where even at the present day the dance is introduced with a beautiful and impressive effect during the benediction of the blessed sacrament. T. call thousands of the faithful to the temple. The signal is given; all is ready for the procession. The guilds first appear, with the images of their respective patron saints, and sometimes the relics of those holy men who, though born in an obscure condition, are worthy of being revered by kings for their virtue: sublime lesson, which the Christian religion alone has given to the world. After these confraternities appears conspicuously the standard of Jesus. Christ, which is no longer a sign of grief, but of general exultation. Then advances at slow pace, in two ranks, a long train of solitaries, those children of the rivulet and the rock whose antique costume revives the memory of other times and other manners. The monastic orders are followed by the secular clergy; and sometimes prelates, clad in the Roman purple, lengthen the solemn procession. Finally, the pontiff of the festival appears in the distance, bearing in his hands the holy eucharist, which is seen radiant under a magnificent canopy at the end of the train, like the sun which is sometimes seen glittering under a golden cloud at the extremity of an avenue illumined by its splendors. A number of graceful youths also take their position in the ranks, some holding baskets of flowers, others vases of perfumes. At a given signal, they turn toward the image of the eternal sun, and scatter rose-leaves in handfuls along the way, while Levites in white tunics skilfully swing the censer in presence of the Most High. Now thousands of voices are heard along the lines, pouring forth the hymn of praise, and bells and cannon announce that the Lord of the Universe has entered his holy temple. At intervals the sacred melody ceases, and there reigns only a majestic silence, like that of the vast ocean in a moment of calm. The multitude are bowed in adoration before God; nothing is heard but here and there the cautious footsteps of those who are hastening to swell the pious throng. But whither will they conduct the God of heaven, whose supreme majesty is thus proclaimed by the powers of earth? To a simple repository, fitted up with linen and green boughs; an innocent temple and rural retreat, like that to which he was welcomed in the days of the ancient covenant. The humble of heart, the poor, the children, march foremost; then come judges, warriors, and other powerful ones of the world. The Son of God is borne along between simplicity and grandeur, as at this time 42* 2 G of the year, when his festival is celebrated, he displays himself to man between the season of flowers and that of thunders. The windows and walls of the city are thronged with the inhabitants, whose hearts glow with joy and adoration on this solemnity of the God of their country. The child in his mother's arms lifts his hands to the Jesus of the mountain, and the old man bent toward the grave feels himself suddenly delivered from all his anxieties; he receives a new insurance of life which fills his soul with joy in the presence of the living God. The festivals of Christianity are arranged with an admirable conformity to the scenes of nature. The feast of Corpus Christi occurs at a time when the heavens and earth proclaim the divine power, when the woods and fields are swarming with new generations of beings. A charming bond unites all things in creation; not a single plant is doomed to widowhood. On the other hand, when the leaves begin to fall, the Church recalls the memory of the faithful departed; because man decays like the foliage of the trees. In the spring, we have a celebration for the rural population. The feast of Corpus Christi admits of all the splendor which worldly greatness can confer, while the Rogation days are more particularly suited to our village people. The soul of the husbandman expands with joy under the influence of religion, as the soil which he cultivates is gladdened by the dews of heaven. Happy the man whose toils result in a useful harvest! whose heart is humbly bowed down by virtue, as the stock is bent by the weight of the grain that surmounts it! CHAPTER VIII. THE ROGATION DAYS. THE bells of the village church strike up, and the rustics immediately quit their various employments. The vine-dresser descends the hill, the husbandman hastens from the plain, the wood-cutter leaves the forest: the mothers, sallying from their huts, arrive with their children; and the young maidens relinquish their spinning wheels, their sheep, and the fountains, to attend the rural festival. They assemble in the parish churchyard on the verdant graves of their forefathers. The only ecclesiastic who is to take part in the ceremony soon appears; this is some aged pastor known only by the appellation of the curé, and this venerable name, in which his own is lost, designates less the minister of the temple than the laborious father of his flock. He comes forth from his solitary house, which stands contiguous to the abode of the dead, over whose ashes he keeps watch. This pastor in his habitation is like an advanced guard on the frontier of life, to receive those who enter and those who depart from this kingdom of wo and grief. A well, some poplars, a vine climbing about his window, and a few pigeons, constitute all the wealth of this king of sacrifices. The apostle of the gospel, vested simply in a surplice, assembles his flock before the principal entrance of the church, and delivers a discourse, which must certainly be very impressive, to judge from the tears of his audience. He frequently repeats the words, My children! my dearly-beloved children! and herein consists the whole secret of the eloquence of this rustic Chrysostom. The exhortation ended, the assembly begins to move off, singing, "Ye shall go forth with pleasure, and ye shall be received with joy; the hills shall leap, and shall hear you with delight." The standard of the saints, the antique banner of the days of chivalry, opens the procession of the villagers who follow their pastor pêlemêle. They pursue their course through lanes overshadowed with trees and deeply cut by the wheels of the rustic vehicles; they climb over high barriers formed by a single trunk of a tree; they proceed along a hedge of hawthorn, where the bee hums, where the bullfinch and the blackbird whistle. The budding trees display the promise of their fruit; all nature is a nosegay of flowers. The woods, the valleys, the rivers, the rocks, hear, in their turns, the hymns of the husbandmen. Astonished at these resounding canticles, the hosts of the green cornfields start forth, and at a convenient distance stop to witness the passage of this rural pageant. At length the rustics return to their labor: religion designed not to make the day on which they implore the Almighty to bless the produce of the earth a day of idleness. With what confidence does the ploughman plunge his share into the soil, after addressing his supplications to Him who governs the spheres and who keeps in his treasuries the breezes of the south and the fertilizing showers! To finish well a day so piously begun, the old men of the village repair at night to converse with their pastor, who takes his evening meal under the poplars in his yard. The moon then sheds her last beams on this festival, which the Church has made to correspond with the return of the most pleasant of the months and the course of the most mysterious of the constellations. The people seem to hear the grain taking root in the earth and the plants growing and maturing. Amid the silence of the woods arise unknown voices, as from the choir of rural angels whose succor has been implored; and the plaintive and sweet notes of the nightingale salute the ears of the veterans, who are seated not far from the solitary tombs. CHAPTER IX. OF CERTAIN CHRISTIAN FESTIVALS. Epiphany, Christmas, &c. THEY whose hearts have never fondly looked back to those days of faith when an act of religion was a family festival, and who despise pleasures which have no recommendation but their innocence, such persons, it may with truth be said, are much to be pitied. If they would deprive us of these simple amusements, will they at least give us something in their stead? Alas! they have tried to do it. The Convention had its sacred days; famine was then styled holy, and Hosanna was changed into the cry of Death forever! How extraordinary, that men, speaking in the name of equality and of all the passions, should never have been able to establish one festival; while the most obscure saint, who had preached naught but poverty, obedience, and the renunciation of worldly goods, had his feast even at the moment when its |