betrayed," and then vanishing no man knew whither, as he had appeared for
no man knew what--fell in with the universal prostration of mind that laid
France on her knees as before the slow unweaving of some ancient prophetic
doom. The famines, the extraordinary diseases, the insurrections of the
peasantry up and down Europe, these were chords struck from the same
mysterious harp; but these were transitory chords. There had been others
of deeper and more sonorous sound. The termination of the Crusades, the
destruction of the Templars, the Papal interdicts, the tragedies caused or
suffered by the House of Anjou, by the Emperor--these were full of a more
permanent significance; but since then the colossal figure of feudalism was
seen standing as it were on tiptoe at Crécy for flight from earth: that was
a revolution unparalleled; yet _that_ was a trifle by comparison with the
more fearful revolutions that were mining below the Church. By her own
internal schisms, by the abominable spectacle of a double Pope--so that no
man, except through political bias, could even guess which was Heaven's
vicegerent, and which the creature of hell--she was already rehearsing, as
in still earlier forms she had rehearsed, the first rent in her foundations
(reserved for the coming century) which no man should ever heal.

These were the loftiest peaks of the cloudland in the skies, that to the
scientific gazer first caught the colors of the _new_ morning in advance.
But the whole vast range alike of sweeping glooms overhead, dwelt upon all
meditative minds, even those that could not distinguish the altitudes nor
decipher the forms. It was, therefore, not her own age alone, as affected
by its immediate calamities, that lay with such weight upon Joanna's mind;
but her own age, as one section in a vast mysterious drama, unweaving
through a century back, and drawing nearer continually to crisis after
crisis. Cataracts and rapids were heard roaring ahead; and signs were seen
far back, by help of old men's memories, which answered secretly to signs
now coming forward on the eye, even as locks answer to keys. It was not