58

FIRST SIGHT OF JERUSALEM.

and the more difficult the roads. We proceeded between whitish rocks, perceiving here and there only a little pale grass, for which some goats were fighting, and leafless bushes, whose roots were exposed to view. Hideouslooking Bedouins, scantily covered with rags, passed us from time to time, some on foot, others on horseback and armed. My dress seemed to surprise them much they stopped and looked stedfastly at me. In some narrow passes, I was so close to them that we almost touched one another. My guide had some moments of uneasiness.

We had ceased to ascend, we were traversing a stony plain; it began to rain very fast, and we had before us one of the finest rainbows that I have ever seen. Its brightness served only to render the objects on which it was reflected still more dull and dreary.

It was four o'clock-the holy city could not be far distant. My heart throbbed; I breathed with difficulty : I fancied that, in every eminence which met my view, I beheld the walls of the holy city. Perceiving a tower and a few houses, I exclaimed, "There it is!" but my guide informed me that it was the Mount of Olives. At that word, which calls forth in the pious spirit such touching recollections, I took off my hat in deep emotion; my eyes filled with tears. I advanced bareheaded a quarter of an hour elapsed. Oh! how long it was!... All at once, in extacy, voiceless and palpitating with felicity, I flung myself from my horse, and, my brow bowed in the dust, I adored Jesus Christ, the son of the living God, the Saviour of the world—I had seen Jerusalem!

...

It wanted five minutes of five o'clock when I entered

FRANCISCAN MONASTERY.

59

the holy city, barefoot, by the gate of the Well-Beloved (Bab el Kzazil); at a quarter after five I was in the church of the Saviour, paying my adorations to him. The Franciscan Fathers received me with a charity worthy of him of whose tomb they are the keepers.

I delivered my letters of recommendation to the reverend Father Francis of the Grotto, warden of the holy sepulchre, to whom I was particularly recommended, agreeably to an order from his holiness, by the Propaganda at Rome. After my feet had been washed and I had taken some refreshment, I was conducted to my cell, opposite to that of the reverend Father. I needed rest; I was harassed; my body had suffered, and my soul had received impressions which no language can describe. Still I could not sleep; if at times I did doze off, I soon waked up again. Thou art at Jerusalem! said I to myself; thou art at Jerusalem, three hundred paces from Calvary, the tomb of Jesus Christ thy Saviour! and this idea roused all my faculties. Sometimes I was ready to ask myself if this were not a dream; but immediately the sweet conviction of the reality, removing this sort of doubt, left in my soul nought but a delicious feeling of happiness and joy.

My intention had been to go, as soon as I was up, to the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and shut myself in with eight or nine monks of the Holy Land who are always there, as I shall explain to you by and by; but, as the festival of the immaculate conception was on the morrow, and the community might perhaps have thought it singular if I had not celebrated it with them, I deferred my visit to the Holy Sepulchre till the following day.

60

VIEW OF JERUSALEM.

At dawn I was already on the terrace of the monastery, which commands a view of the whole city and its environs. The sun rose magnificently behind the Mount of Olives. I had in front the church of the Holy Sepulchre and its lofty cupolas; farther off, the precincts and the site on which stood of old the temple of Solomon, bounded by the valley of Jehosaphat; on the right, the ancient palace of David. On my knees, bending over the parapet, I could not tire of gazing at these places and these monuments. I scarcely listened to the good friar who pointed them out to me, for my heart had already guessed them before his lips had uttered their names; I contemplated more especially that church of the Holy Sepulchre, to which are attached recollections so painful and so affecting. I should be obliged to wait twenty-four hours longer before I could go thither; every moment seemed to me an age. I had fully made up my mind, however, to pay my first visit to Golgotha and the sacred tomb alone and in the silence of night. I knew how difficult this would be, on account of the great number of Greek and Armenian pilgrims who had come this year to Jerusalem; I hoped, nevertheless, to find soon some favourable hour for the execution of my design. Meanwhile, eager to see the Via dolorosa, and unable thoroughly to satisfy my impatience, I resolved to inspect at least some of the places along which the divine victim had passed on his way to consummate the grand expiation.

At two in the afternoon I left the monastery of the Franciscan Fathers, accompanied by Father Perpetuus de Solera, secretary of the Holy Land, and a dragoman.

Deep sadness had taken possession of my soul; it increased as I advanced towards that theatre of so much anguish.

The street leading to the Via dolorosa is rather less irregular than that road itself, and there is an almost continual descent to the spot where Simon the Cyrenean assisted our Lord to carry his cross.

The first station that presents itself on quitting the monastery is that where Jesus, followed by an immense crowd, turned towards the women of Israel who were bewailing and weeping over his fate: it is marked by a walled-up doorway. I was impelled at this spot to pay some token of respect. The dragoman observed that I should be insulted by the Turks if they were to see me. I was not of his opinion: I fell upon my knees, and, on seeing the most remarkable places passed by the Son of God, laden with the cross on which he was to atone for the sins of men, I repeated the same homage of adoration and sorrow, and not a creature said a word to me.

We advanced along the Via dolorosa, when the Father who accompanied me stood still. "Here it was," said he," that Jesus met his blessed mother!" These words produced a deep sensation; they will long reverberate in my soul. What person in the world would not feel moved when thinking of that fond mother, ineeting her son who had already once fallen beneath his burden!... He was surrounded by executioners, covered with spittle, dust, and blood!

It was Jesus! it was her son! he whom she had suckled at her breast! whom she had warmed in her bosom! he, with whom she had fled into Egypt! whom

62

PILATE'S PRÆTORIUM.

she had nursed in childhood! with whom she had shared the bread of poverty! whose absence for a few days only had caused her such painful alarm! It was Jesus! it was her son! whom she saw going to die! to die the most ignominious, the most painful of deaths! it was her son whom she accompanied, and whose blood-stained footsteps she watered with her tears!

We arrived at the Prætorium of Pilate, where Christ was condemned to death. Opposite to the relics of that palace, and on the spot where the Man of Sorrows received with such entire resignation his sentence of death, methought I still heard the homicidal cries with which it had rung eighteen centuries ago; and I could distinguish, amidst the clamours of death, these frightful words: "His blood be upon us and upon our children!" Methought I could see them written in letters of blood on each of the stones by which I was surrounded!

It was not very late, and I longed to see the garden of Gethsemane, whither Jesus frequently retired with his disciples, and where, the evening before his death, he was betrayed by a kiss. I requested the Father secretary and the dragoman to take me to it. We passed through the gate Bab-el-Sidi-Mariam, which faces the Mount of Olives; it is called indiscriminately St. Stephen's or Mary's gate, because through this gate the saint was taken to be stoned, and because it leads also to the tomb of the blessed Virgin.

We descended almost immediately by an extremely rapid declivity of the valley of Jehosaphat to the spot where St. Stephen was martyred: " and they cast him out of the city, and stoned Stephen, calling upon God,