Part 6 (1/2)
The Hospice of the Great Saint Bernard stands thus in a narrow mountain notch, with only room for itself and its lake, while above it, on either side, are jagged heights dashed with snow-banks, their summits frosted with eternal ice.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Great Saint Bernard.]
It is a large stone building, three stories high, beside the two attic floors of the steep, sloping roof. A great square house of cold, gray stone, as unattractive as a barn or a woolen-mill, plain, cold, and solid. At one end of the main building is a stone addition precisely like the building itself. On the other side of the bridle-path is an outbuilding--a tall stone shed, ”the Hotel of Saint Louis,” three stories high, as plain and uncompromising as the Hospice is. The front door of the main building is on the side away from the lake. From this door down the north side of the mountain the path descends steeply from the crest of the Pennine Alps to the valley of the Rhone, even more swiftly than the path on the south side drops downward to the valley of the Po.
As one approaches the Hospice he is met by a noisy band of great dogs, yellow and white, with the loudest of ba.s.s voices, barking incessantly, eager to pull you out of the snow, and finding that you do not need this sort of rescue, apparently equally eager to tear you to pieces for having deceived them. Cla.s.sical names these dogs still bear--names worthy of the mountain long sacred to Jupiter, on which the Hospice is built--Jupitere, Junon, Mars, Vulcan, Pluton, the inevitable Leon, and the indomitable Turc, and all have for the traveler such a greeting as only a band of big, idle dogs can give. These dogs are not so large nor so well kept as the Saint Bernard dogs we see in American cities, but they have the same great head, huge feet and legs, and the same intelligent eye, as if they were capable of doing anything if they would only stop barking long enough to think of something else.
The inside of the house corresponds to its outer appearance. Thick, heavy triple doors admit you to a cold hall floored with stone.
Adjoining this is a parlor, likewise floored with the coldest of stone, and this parlor is used as the dining-room and waiting-room for travelers. Its walls are hung with pictures, many of them valuable works of art, the gifts of former guests, while its chilly air is scantily warmed by a small fireplace, on which whoever will may throw pine boughs and fragments of the spongy wood of the fir. By this fire the guests take their turn in getting partly warmed, then pa.s.s away to s.h.i.+ver in the outer wastes of the room.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Hospice of the Great Saint Bernard.]
In this room the travelers are served with plain repasts, princes and peasants alike, coa.r.s.e bread, red wine, coffee, and boiled meat; everything about the table neat and clean, but with no pretense at pampering the appet.i.te. You take whatever you please without money and without price. Should you care to pay your way, or care to help on the work of the Hospice, you can leave your mite, be it large or small, in a box near the door of the chapel. The guest-rooms are plain but comfortable--a few religious pictures on the walls; tall, old-fas.h.i.+oned bedsteads, with abundant feather-beds and warm blankets. For one night only all persons who come are welcome. The next day all alike, unless sick or crippled, must pa.s.s on.
There are about a dozen monks in the Hospice now, all of them young men, devoted to their work, and some of them at least intelligent and generously educated. The hard climate and the exposure of winter breaks down their health before they are old. When they become unable to carry on the duties of the Hospice, they are sent down the mountains to Martigny, while others come up to take their places. There are beautiful days in the summer-time, but no season of the year is free from severity. Even in July and August the ground is half the time white with snow. Terrible blasts sweep through the mountains; for the commonest summer shower in the valleys below is, in these heights, a raging snow-storm, and its snow-laden winds are never faced with impunity.
We visited the Hospice in July, 1890. We drove from Aosta up to Saint Remy, a little village crowded in on the side of the mountain, where the pine-trees cease. The light rain which followed us out from Saint Remy changed to snow as we came up the rocky slopes. By the time we reached the Hospice it became a blinding sleet. The ground was only whitened, so that the dogs who came barking to meet us had no need to dig us out from the drifts. In this they seemed disappointed, and barked again.
Once inside the walls, one cared not to go out. Many travelers came up the mountain that day. Among them were a man and his wife, Italian peasants, who had been over the mountains to spend a day or two with friends in some village on the Swiss side, and were now returning home.
Man and woman were dressed in their peasants' best, and with them was a little girl, some four years old. The child carried a toy horse in her hands, the gift of some friend below. As they toiled up the steep path in the blinding snow, all of them thinly clad and dressed only for summer, they seemed chilled through and through, while the child was almost frozen. The monks came out to meet them, took the child in their arms, and brought her and her parents to the fire, covered her shoulders with a warm shawl, and, after feeding them, sent them down the mountain to their home in the valley, warmed and filled. This was a simple act, the easiest of all their many duties, but it was a very touching one. Such duties make up the simple round of their lives.
In the storms of winter the work of the Hospice takes a sterner cast.
From November to May the gales are incessant. The snow piles up in billows, and in the whirling clouds all traces of human occupation are obliterated. There are many peasants and workingmen who go forth from Italy into Switzerland and France, and who wish to return home when their summer labors are over. To these the pa.s.s of the Great Saint Bernard is the only route which they can afford. The long railway rides and the great distances of the Simplon and the Saint Gotthard would mean the using up of their scanty earnings. If they go home at all, they must trust their lives to the storms and the monks, and take the path which leads by the Hospice. So they come over day after day, the winter long. No matter how great the storm, the dogs are on the watch. In the last winter, of the many who came, not one was lost.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Hospice in winter.]
This is the Hospice as it stands to-day. I come next to tell its story and the story of its founder. I tell it, in the most part, from a little volume in French, which some modest and nameless monk of the Hospice has compiled from the old Latin records of the monks who have gone before him. This volume he has printed, as he says, ”for the use of the faithful in the parishes which lie next the Alps, and which, in his time, the good Saint Bernard[1] pa.s.sed through.” This story I must tell in his own spirit, in some degree at least, else I should have no right to tell it at all.
In the tenth century, he informs us, the dark ages of Europe could scarcely have been darker. Weak and wicked kings, the dregs of the worn-out blood of Charlemagne, misruled France, while along the northern coast the Normans robbed and plundered at their will. Even the church had her share of crimes and scandals. In this dark time, says the chronicle, ”G.o.d, who had promised to be with His own to the end of the centuries, did not fail to raise up in that darkness great saints who should teach the people to lift their eyes toward heaven; to rise above afflictions; not to take the form of the world for a permanent habitation, and to suffer its pains with patience, in the prospect of eternity.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: Jupitere.]
It happened that in the days of King Raoul, in the Castle of Menthon, on the north bank of the lake of Annecy, in Savoy, in the year 923, Bernard de Menthon was born. His father was the Baron Richard, famous among the n.o.blemen of the time, while his mother, the Lady Bernoline, was ill.u.s.trious for virtues. The young Bernard was a fair child, and his history, as seen from the perspective of his monkish historian, shows that even in his earliest youth he was predestined for saints.h.i.+p.
Even before he could walk, the little child would join his hands in the att.i.tude of supplication, and murmur words which might have been prayers. While still very young, he brought in a book one day and asked his mother to teach him to read, and when she would not, or could not, he wept, for the books in which even then he delighted were the prayer-books of the church.
He grew up bright and beautiful, and his father was proud of him, and determined that he should take his part in public life. But Bernard's thoughts ran in other channels. He spent his moments in copying psalms, and in writing down the words of divine service which he heard.
Even in his seventh year he began to practice austerities and self-castigation, which he kept up through his life. He chose for his model Saint Nicholas, the saint who through the ages has been kind to children. Him he resolved to imitate, and to walk always in his steps.
The University of Paris had been founded by Charlemagne more than a century before, and this university was then the Mecca of all ambitious youth. To the University of Paris his father decided to send him. But his mother feared the influence of the gay capital, and wished to keep Bernard by her side. But the boy said, ”Virtue has too deep a root in my heart, mother, for the air of Paris to tarnish it. I will bring back more of science, but not less of purity.” And to Paris he went.
Here he studied law, to please his father, and theology, to please himself. ”As Tobias lived faithful in Nineveh,” so the chronicle says, ”thus lived Bernard in Paris.” In the midst of snares unnumbered, he only redoubled his austerities--”_in sanct.i.tate persistens, studiosus valde_,” so the record says.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Monks of the Great Saint Bernard.]
His thoughts ran on the misery of humanity, which he measured by the abas.e.m.e.nt to which Christ had submitted in order to effect its redemption. A great influence in his life came from Germain, his tutor, a man who had lived the life of a scholar in the world, and who had at last withdrawn to sanct.i.ty and prayer. Although Bernard knew that his father expected a brilliant future for him, and that he hoped to effect for him a marriage in some family of the great of those days, yet he took upon himself the vow of celibacy. ”G.o.d lives in virgin souls,” he said. There is a record of an argument with Germain, in which his tutor tries to test the strength of his purpose. Germain tells him that even in a monastery evil cannot be excluded, and that many even of the most austere monks live lives of petty jealousy and ign.o.ble ambition. ”There are many,” Germain says, ”who are saved in the struggle of the world who would be s.h.i.+pwrecked in a monastery.”
But Bernard is steadfast in his choice. ”Happy are those who have chosen to dwell in G.o.d's court, and to sleep on His estate.” Thus day and night he struggles against all temptations of worldly glory or pleasure.