and some grandee of the highest rank had been enabled to depose, that he had seen within them the very body of the deceased sovereign. Such, in pursuance of an ancient custom, was the duty confided to the zeal of Don Francis Borgia-nor was any one better fitted for such a trust. The eye, now forever closed, had never turned to him but with maternal kindness, and every lineament of that serene and once eloquent countenance was indelibly engraven on his memory. Amidst the half-uttered prayers that commended her soul to the Divine mercy, and the low dirge of the organ, he advanced with streaming eyes, and reverently raised the covering which concealed the secrets of the grave, when-but why or how pourtray the appalling and loathsome spectacle? That gentle brow, that eloquent countenance, that form so lately raised on earth's proudest throne, and extolled with an almost adoring homage! Don Francis turned from the sight to shudder and to pray. It was the great epoch in the life of Borgia. In the eyes of the world, indeed, he may have been unchanged; but in his eyes, the whole aspect of that world was altered. Lord of a princely fortune, the heir of an illustrious house, the favourite kinsman of the Emperor of the West; renowned in the very flower of his youth as a warrior, a courtier, and a musician; his home hallowed by conjugal love, and gladdened by the sports of his children,-for whom had life a deeper interest, or who could erect on a surer basis, a loftier fabric of more brilliant hopes? Those interests and hopes he deliberately resigned, and, at the age of twenty-nine, bound himself by a solemn vow, that in the event of his surviving Eleonora, he would end his days as a member of some religious order. He had gazed on the hideous triumph of death and sin over prospects still more splendid than his own. For him the soothing illusions of existence were no more-earth and its inhabitants, withering under the curse of their Maker, might put on their empty gauds, and for some transient hour, dream and talk of happiness. But the curse was there, and there would it lie, crushing the frivolous spirit the most when felt the least, and consigning alike to that foul debasement the lovely and the brave- the sylph now floating through the giddy dance, and the warrior now proudly treading the field of victory. From such meditation Charles endeavoured to recall his friend to the common duties of life. He required him to assume the viceroyalty of Catalonia, and adorned him with the cross of the order of Alcantara, then, of all chivalric honours, the noblest and the most higly prized. His administration was firm, munificent and just; it forms the highest era of his life, and is especially signalized by the same sedulous care for the education of the young, which afterwards formed his highest praise as General of the Order of Jesus. Ingenious above all men in mortifying his natural affections, Don Francis could not neglect the occasion which his new dignities afforded him, of incurring much wholesome contumely. Sumptuous banquets must be given in honour of his sovereign, when he could at once fast and be despised for fasting. To exhibit himself in penitential abasement before the people under his authority, would give to penitence the appropriate accompaniment of general contempt. On the festival of "the Invention of the Holy Cross," mysteries were to be celebrated by the ladies of Barcelona, when, to prevent the profane intrusion of any of the coarser sex, the viceroy himself undertook the office of sentinel. With a naked dagger in his hand, a young nobleman demanded entrance, addressing to the viceroy insults such as every gentleman is bound, under the heaviest penalty of the laws of chivalry, to expiate by blood. A braver man did not tread the soil of Spain than Don Francis, nor any one to whom the reproach of poltroonery was more hateful. And yet his sword did not leap from its scabbard. With a calm rebuke and courteous demeanour, he allowed the bravo to enter the sacred precincts, preferring the imputation of cowardice, though stinging like an adder, to the sin of avenging himself, and, indeed, to the duty of maintaining his lawful authority. History has omitted to tell what were the weapons, or what the incantation, by which the ladies promptly ejected the insolent intruder, nor has she recorded how they afterwards received their guardian knight of Alcantara. Her only care has been to excite our admiration for this most illustrious victory in the bosom of Don, of the meekness of the saint over the human passions of the soldier. At the end of four years, Don Francis was relieved, by the death of his father, from his vice-regal office, and assumed his hereditary title of Duke of Gandia. His vassals exulted in the munificence of their new chief. The ancient retainers of his family lived on his bounty-cottages, convents and hospitals, rose on his estates fortresses were built to check the ravages of the Moorish corsairs, and the mansion of his ancestors re-appeared in all its ancient splendour. In every work of mercy, the wise and gentle Eleonora was the riyal of her lord. But it was the only strife which ever agitated the Castle of Gandia, Austerities were practised there, but gloom and lassitude were unknown; nor did the bright suns of Spain gild any feudal ramparts, within which love, and peace, the child of love, shed their milder light with a more abiding radiance. But on that countenance, hitherto so calm and so submissive, might at length be traced the movements of an inward tempest, with which, even when prostrate before the altar, the Duke of Gandia strove in vain. Conversant with every form of self-inflicted suffering, how should he find strength to endure the impending death of Eleonora! His was a prayer transcending the resources of language and of thought: it was the mute agony of a breaking heart. But after the whirlwind and the fire, was heard the still small voice-it said, or seemed to say, "if it be thy will, she shall recover; but not for her real welfare nor for thine." Adoring gratitude swept away every feebler emotion, and the suppliant's grief at length found utterance. "Thy will be done. Thou knowest what is best for us. Whom have we in heaven but Thee, and whom upon earth should we desire in comparison of Thee ?" At the age of thirty-six, the Duke of Gandia committed to the tomb the frame once animated by a spirit from which not death itself could separate him. In the sacred retirement to which, in that event, he had devoted his remaining days, Eleonora would still unite her prayers to his; and as each of those days should decline into the welcome shadows of evening, one stage the more towards his re-union with her would have been traversed. The Castle of Gandia was still hung with the funeral draperies when a welcome, though unexpected, guest arrived there,-it was Peter Faber, the officiating priest at the Crypt of Montmartre, charged by Ignatius with the mission to promote the cause of Christian education in Spain. Aided by his counsels, and by the letters of the patriarch, the Duke erected on his estates a church, a college, and a library, and placed them under the care of teachers selected by Ignatius, The sorrows of the Duke were relieved as his wealth flowed still more copiously into this new channel of beneficence; and the universities of Alcala and Seville were enlarged by his bounty with similar foundations. But, as Faber remarked, a still nobler edifice was yet to be erected on the soul of the founder himself. The first stone of it was laid in the Duke's performance of the Spiritual Exercises. To the completion of this invisible, but imperishable building, the remainder of his life was inflexibly devoted. With Ignatius the Duke had long maintained a correspondence, in which the stately courtesies of Spanish noblemen not ungracefully temper the severe tones of patriarchal authority and filial reverence. Admission into the order of Jesus was an honour for which, in this case, the aspirant was humbly content, and was wisely permitted long to wait and sue. To study the biography, that he might imitate the life, of Him by whose holy name the society was called; to preach in his own household, or at the wicket of the nunnery of the ladies of St. Clair; and, day by day, to place in humiliating contrast some proof of his own demerit, were the first probationary steps which the Duke was required to tread in the toilsome path on which he had thus entered. It was path from which Philip, then governing Spain, would have willingly seduced him. He consulted him on the most critical affairs; summoned him to take a high station in the states of Castille; and pressed on his acceptance the office of grand master of the royal household. It was declined in favor of the Duke of Alva. Had Gandia preferred the duties of his secular rank to those of his religious aspirations, Spain might have had a saint the less and seven provinces the more. With the elevation of Alva, the butcheries in the Netherlands, the disgrace of Spain, and the independence of Holland might have been averted. Warned by his escape, the Duke implored with renewed earnestness his immediate admission into the order; nor was Ignatius willing that his proselyte should again incur such dangers. At the chapel of his own college he accordingly pronounced the irrevocable vows; a Papal bull having dispensed, during a term of four years, with any public avowal of the change. They were passed in the final adjustment of his secular affairs. He had lived in the splendour appropriate to his rank and fortune, and in the exercise of the bounty becoming his eminence in the Christian commonwealth. But now all was to be abandoned, even of the means of almsgiving, for he was himself henceforth to live on the alms of others. He gave his children in marriage to the noblest houses in Spain and Portugal, transferred to his eldest son the enjoyment of the patrimonial estates of Gandia, and then, at the age of forty, meekly betook himself to the study of scholastic divinity, of the traditions of the church, and of the canons of the general councils. He even submitted to all the rules and performed all the public exercises enjoined on the youngest student. Such was his piety, that the thorny fagots of the schoolman fed instead of smothering the flame; and on the margin of his Thomas Aquinas might be seen some devout aspiration, extracted by his sacred alchemy from each subtle distinction in the text. Never, before or since, was the degree of Doctor of Divinity, to which he now proceeded, so hardly earned or so well deserved. Two of the brothers of the Duke had been members of the sacred college, and his humility had refused the purple offered at the instance of the Emperor to two of his sons. But how should the new doctor avert from his own head the ecclesiastical cap of maintenance with which Charles was now desirous to replace the ducal coronet? He fled the presence of his imperial patron; made and executed his own testamentary dispositions, delivered his last parental charge to his eldest son, and bade a final adieu to his weeping family. The gates of the castle of Gandia closed on their self-banished lord. He went forth like Francis Xavier, chaunting the song of David-" When Israel went out of Egypt, and the house of Jacob from a strange people;" adding from another strain of the royal minstrel, "Our bonds are broken and we are delivered." He lived for more than twenty years from this time, and in his future missions into Spain often passed the gates of the castle, but never more re-entered them, He became a stranger even to his children, never again so much as passing a single day in their society, or even permitting himself to become acquainted with their offspring. As the bird set free to her nest, so hasted the emaciated Duke to take his seat at the footstool of Ignatius. Yet in his route through Ferrara and Florence, his sacred impatience was arrested, and his humility confirmed, by the unwelcome honours yielded to him by his kinsmen, the reigning sovereigns of those duchies. He would have entered Rome by night; but in the city of triumphs and ovations, the victorious Loyola must exhibit so illustrious a captive. Attended by the ambassador of Spain, by a prince of the house of Colonna, and by a long train of cardinals, priests and nobles, the Duke of Gandia advanced in solemn procession to the Casa Professa. There, in the presence of his General, his wearied spirit found at length the repose which the most profuse liberality of fortune had been unable to bestow. With tears of joy, he kissed the feet of the patriarch and of his professional brethren, esteemed the meanest office in their household an honor too exalted for so unworthy an associate; and then, in a general confession, poured into the ear of Ignatius every secret of his conscience from the dawn of life to that longdesired hour. Such zeal was a treasure too precious to be left without some great and definite object; and as the Duke was still steward of some of this world's treasures, which he had devoted to sacred uses, they were employed in building at Rome the church and college afterwards so famous as the College de Propaganda Fide. Only one secular care awaited him. His rank as a grandee of Spain and the cross of Alcantara, could not be laid aside without the consent of the Emperor. It was solicited with all the grace of an accomplished courtier, and all the fervour of a saint. But while he awaited at Rome the answer of Charles a new alarm disturbed the serenity of the Casa Professa. The dreadful pur ple was again pressed on him with all the weight of Papal admonition. To avoid it, Gandia fled the presence of the Pope and Ignatius, returned to Spain, performed a pilgrimage to the Castle of Loyola, kissed the hallowed ground, and then burying himself in a Jesuit College at Ognato, once more awaited the decision of the Emperor. It soon arrived. He was no longer a Duke, a knight of St. Jago, nor even a Spanish gentleman. Solemnly, and in due legal form, he renounced all these titles, and with them all his property and territorial rights. Even his secular dress was laid aside, and his head was prepared by the tonsure for the Episcopal touch, emblematic of the most awful mystery. The astonished spectators collected and preserved the holy relics. And now bent in lowly prostration before the altar at Ognato, the Father Francis had no further sacrifice of a heart emptied of all the affections of the world. Long and silent was his prayer, but it was now unattended with any trace of disorder. The tears he shed were such as might have bedewed the cheek of the First Man before he had tasted the bitterness of sin. He rose from his knees, bade a last farewell to his attendants, and Father Francis was left alone with his Creator. It was a solitude not long to be maintained. The fame of his devotion filled the Peninsula. All who needed spiritual counsel, and who wished to indulge an idle curiosity, resorted to his cell. Kings sought his advice, wondering congregations hung on his lips, and two, at least, of the grandees of Spain imitated his example. His spiritual triumphs were daily more and more splendid; and, if he might still escape the still threatened promotion into the College of Cardinals, might be as enduring as his life. The authority of Ignatius, not unaided by some equivocal exercise of his ingenuity, at length placed Father Francis beyond the reach of this last danger. They both went down to the grave without witnessing the introduction into their order of any ecclesiastical dignity. But there was yet one tie to the pomp and vanity of this world, which could not be entirely broken. During his vice-regal administration, Father Francis had on one occasion traversed the halls of the Castle of Barcelona in deep and secret conference with his imperial cousin. Each at that interview imparted to the other his design of devoting to religious retirement the interval which should intervene between the business and the close of life. At every season of disappointment Charles reverted to this purpose, and abandoned or postponed it with each return of success. But now broken with sickness and sorrow, he fixed his residence in a monastery in Estremadura, and summoned the former viceroy of Catalonia to the presence of his early friend and patron. Falling on his knees, as in times of yore, Father Francis offered to impress the kiss of homage on the hand which had so lately borne the sceptre of half the civilized world. But Charles embraced his cousin, and compelled him to sit, and to sit covered by his side. Long and frequent were their conversations; but the record of them transmitted to us by the historians of the Order of Jesus, has but little semblance of authenticity. Charles assails and Borgia defends the new institute, and the imperial disputant, of course, yields to the combined force of eloquence and truth. It seems less improbable that the publication of Memoirs of the life of the Emperor, to be written by himself, was one subject of serious debate at these interviews, and that the good father dissuaded it. If the tale be true, he has certainly one claim the less to the gratitude of the later times. What seems certain is, that he undertook and executed some secret mission from Charles to the Court of Portugal, that he acted as one of the executors of his will, and delivered a funeral oration in praise of the deceased Emperor before the Spanish Court at Valladolid. From this point, the life of Borgia merges into the general history of the order to which he had attached himself. It is a passage of history full of the miracles of self denial, and of miracles in the more general acceptation of the word. To advance the cause of education, and to place in the hands of his own society the control of that mighty engine, was the labor which Father Francis, as their General, chiefly proposed to himself. His success was complete, and he lived to see the establishment, in almost every State of Europe, of colleges formed on the model of that which he had himself formed in the town of Gandia. SONNET-TO FAITH. Like a frail bark upon a stormy sea, With naught to shield it from the tempest's shock, Is wretched man who has no trust in Thee, By him no incense from thy altar rise, Of One who died on Calvary to save, And when at last he's lived his transient day, ANON. |