Getting error information from exceptions

[David Fishburn]

Xalan 1.5, Xerces 2.2.0

Coming from the samples, I have code like:
            try
            {
                // Create an instance of the class we wrote to handle
                // the callbacks...
                CallbackHandler         theHandler(api, arg_handle,
&retval);

                // Do the transform...
                ret = theXalanTransformer.transform(
                        //xml_str.c_str(),
                        theXMLStream,
                        inputSource,
                        &theHandler,
                        writeCallback,
                        flushCallback);

                if(ret != 0)
                {
                    cerr << "Error: " <<
theXalanTransformer.getLastError() << endl;
                }
            }
            catch(...)
            {
                    cerr << "Error: " <<
theXalanTransformer.getLastError() << endl;
            }


In the catch block, theXalanTransformer.getLastError() has nothing in
it.
Is there anyway (this could be a simple C++ question) to actually get
some *meaningful* message on what threw an exception.  You can do this
easily in Java, so there must be something similar in C++.

Thanks in advance.
Dave