forth living young and nursing them with milk.
In this class the beasts of prey form a distinct order,
superior to the Whales or the herbivorous animals,
on account of the higher complication of their structure;
and for the same reason we place the Monkeys above
them all. But among the beasts of prey we distinguish
the Bears, as a family, from the family of Dogs, Wolves,
and Cats, on account of their different form, which
does not imply a difference either in the complication
of their structure or in the mode of execution of
their plan.
* * * *
*
THE PENANCE.
The course of our story requires us to return to the
Capuchin convent, and to the struggles and trials
of its Superior; for in his hands is the irresistible
authority which must direct the future life of Agnes.
From no guilty compliances, no heedless running into
temptation, had he come to love her. The temptation
had met him in the direct path of duty; the poison
had been breathed in with the perfume of sweetest and
most life-giving flowers: nor could he shun that
temptation, nor cease to inhale that fatal sweetness,
without confessing himself vanquished in a point where,
in his view, to yield was to be lost. The subtle
and deceitful visit of Father Johannes to his cell
had the effect of thoroughly rousing him to a complete
sense of his position, and making him feel the immediate,
absolute necessity of bringing all the energy of his
will, all the resources of his nature to bear on its
present difficulties. For he felt, by a fine
intuition, that already he was watched and suspected;—any
faltering step now, any wavering, any change in his
mode of treating his female penitents, would be maliciously
noted. The military education of his early days
had still left in his mind a strong residuum of personal
courage and honor, which made him regard it as dastardly
to flee when he ought to conquer, and therefore he
set his face as a flint for victory.
But reviewing his interior world, and taking a survey
of the work before him, he felt that sense of a divided
personality which often becomes so vivid in the history
of individuals of strong will and passion. It
seemed to him that there were two men within him:
the one turbulent, passionate, demented; the other
vainly endeavoring by authority, reason, and conscience
to bring the rebel to subjection. The discipline
of conventual life, the extraordinary austerities
to which he had condemned himself, the monotonous
solitude of his existence, all tended to exalt the
vivacity of the nervous system, which, in the Italian
constitution, is at all times disproportionately developed;
and when those weird harp-strings of the nerves are
once thoroughly unstrung, the fury and tempest of the
discord sometimes utterly bewilders the most practised
self-government.
