



Produced by Neil McLachlan and David Widger





THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH


by Charles Reade




Etext Notes:

1. Greek passages are enclosed in angled brackets, e.g. {methua}, and
     have been transliterated according to:alpha   A, a
     beta    B, b
     gamma   G, g
     delta   D, d
     epsilon E, e
     zeta    Z, z
     eta     Y, y
     theta   Th, th
     iota    I, i
     kappa   K, k
     lamda   L, l
     mu      M, m
     nu      N, n
     omicron O, o
     pi      P, p
     rho     R, r
     sigma   S, s
     tau     T, t
     phi     Ph, ph
     chi     Ch, ch
     psi     Ps, ps
     xi      X, x
     upsilon U, u
     omega   W, w

2. All diacritics have been removed from this version

3. References for the Author's footnotes are enclosed in square
brackets(e.g. (1)) and collected at the end of the chapter they occur
in.

4. There are 100 chapters in the book, each starting with CHAPTER R,
where R is the chapter number expressed as a Roman numeral.




AUTHOR'S PREFACE

A small portion of this tale appeared in Once a Week, July-September,
1859, under the title of "A Good Fight."

After writing it, I took wider views of the subject, and also felt
uneasy at having deviated unnecessarily from the historical outline of
a true story. These two sentiments have cost me more than a year's very
hard labour, which I venture to think has not been wasted. After this
plain statement I trust all who comment on this work will see that to
describe it as a reprint would be unfair to the public and to me. The
English language is copious, and, in any true man's hands, quite able
to convey the truth--namely, that one-fifth of the present work is a
reprint, and four-fifths of it a new composition.

CHARLES READE




CHAPTER I

Not a day passes over the earth, but men and women of no note do great
deeds, speak great words, and suffer noble sorrows. Of these obscure
heroes, philosophers, and martyrs, the greater part will never be known
till that hour, when many that are great shall be small, and the small
great; but of others the world's knowledge may be said to sleep: their
lives and characters lie hidden from nations in the annals that record
them. The general reader cannot feel them, they are presented so curtly
and coldly: they are not like breathing stories appealing to his heart,
but little historic hail-stones striking him but to glance off his
bosom: nor can he understand them; for epitomes are not narratives, as
skeletons are not human figures.

Thus records of prime truths remain a dead letter to plain folk: the
writers have left so much to the imagination, and imagination is so
rare a gift. Here, then, the writer of fiction may be of use to the
public--as an interpreter.

There is a musty chronicle, written in intolerable Latin, and in it
a chapter where every sentence holds a fact. Here is told, with harsh
brevity, the strange history of a pair, who lived untrumpeted, and died
unsung, four hundred years ago; and lie now, as unpitied, in that stern
page, as fossils in a rock. Thus, living or dead, Fate is still unjust
to them. For if I can but show you what lies below that dry chronicler's
words, methinks you will correct the indifference of centuries, and give
those two sore-tried souls a place in your heart--for a day.

It was past the middle of the fifteenth century; Louis XI was sovereign
of France; Edward IV was wrongful king of England; and Philip "the
Good," having by force and cunning dispossessed his cousin Jacqueline,
and broken her heart, reigned undisturbed this many years in Holland,
where our tale begins.

Elias, and Catherine his wife, lived in the little town of Tergou. He
traded, wholesale and retail, in cloth, silk, brown holland, and,
above all, in curried leather, a material highly valued by the middling
people, because it would stand twenty years' wear, and turn an ordinary
knife, no small virtue in a jerkin of that century, in which folk were
so liberal of their steel; even at dinner a man would leave his meat
awhile, and carve you his neighbour, on a very moderate difference of
opinion.

The couple were well to do, and would have been free from all earthly
care, but for nine children. When these were coming into the world, one
per annum, each was hailed with rejoicings, and the saints were thanked,
not expostulated with; and when parents and children were all young
together, the latter were looked upon as lovely little playthings
invented by Heaven for the amusement, joy, and evening solace of people
in business.

But as the olive-branches shot up, and the parents grew older, and saw
with their own eyes the fate of large families, misgivings and care
mingled with their love. They belonged to a singularly wise and
provident people: in Holland reckless parents were as rare as
disobedient children. So now when the huge loaf came in on a gigantic
trencher, looking like a fortress in its moat, and, the tour of the
table once made, seemed to have melted away, Elias and Catherine would
look at one another and say, "Who is to find bread for them all when we
are gone?"

At this observation the younger ones needed all their filial respect to
keep their little Dutch countenances; for in their opinion dinner and
supper came by nature like sunrise and sunset, and, so long as that
luminary should travel round the earth, so long as the brown loaf go
round their family circle, and set in their stomachs only to rise again
in the family oven. But the remark awakened the national thoughtfulness
of the elder boys, and being often repeated, set several of the family
thinking, some of them good thoughts, some ill thoughts, according to
the nature of the thinkers.

"Kate, the children grow so, this table will soon be too small."

"We cannot afford it, Eli," replied Catherine, answering not his words,
but his thought, after the manner of women.

Their anxiety for the future took at times a less dismal but more
mortifying turn. The free burghers had their pride as well as the
nobles; and these two could not bear that any of their blood should go
down in the burgh after their decease.

So by prudence and self-denial they managed to clothe all the little
bodies, and feed all the great mouths, and yet put by a small hoard
to meet the future; and, as it grew and grew, they felt a pleasure the
miser hoarding for himself knows not.

One day the eldest boy but one, aged nineteen, came to his mother, and,
with that outward composure which has so misled some persons as to the
real nature of this people, begged her to intercede with his father to
send him to Amsterdam, and place him with a merchant. "It is the way
of life that likes me: merchants are wealthy; I am good at numbers;
prithee, good mother, take my part in this, and I shall ever be, as I am
now, your debtor."

Catherine threw up her hands with dismay and incredulity.

"What! leave Tergou!"

"What is one street to me more than another? If I can leave the folk of
Tergou, I can surely leave the stones."

"What! quit your poor father now he is no longer young?"

"Mother, if I can leave you, I can leave"

"What! leave your poor brothers and sisters, that love you so dear?"

"There are enough in the house without me."

"What mean you, Richart? Who is more thought of than you Stay, have I
spoken sharp to you? Have I been unkind to you?"

"Never that I know of; and if you had, you should never hear of it from
me. Mother," said Richart gravely, but the tear was in his eye, "it all
lies in a word, and nothing can change my mind. There will be one mouth
less for you to feed.'

"There now, see what my tongue has done," said Catherine, and the next
moment she began to cry. For she saw her first young bird on the edge
of the nest trying his wings to fly into the world. Richart had a calm,
strong will, and she knew he never wasted a word.

It ended as nature has willed all such discourse shall end: young
Richart went to Amsterdam with a face so long and sad as it had never
been seen before, and a heart like granite.

That afternoon at supper there was one mouth less. Catherine looked at
Richart's chair and wept bitterly. On this Elias shouted roughly and
angrily to the children, "Sit wider, can't ye: sit wider!" and turned
his head away over the back of his seat awhile, and was silent.

Richart was launched, and never cost them another penny; but to fit him
out and place him in the house of Vander Stegen, the merchant, took all
the little hoard but one gold crown. They began again. Two years passed,
Richart found a niche in commerce for his brother Jacob, and Jacob left
Tergou directly after dinner, which was at eleven in the forenoon. At
supper that day Elias