wife: she it is whom they undertake to protect against her natural protector. They offer to league with her in order to transform the husband. If it were once firmly established that marriage, instead of being unity in two persons, is a league of one of them with a stranger, it would become exceedingly scarce. Two to one! the game would seem too desperate; few people would be bold enough to face the peril. There would be no marriages but for money; and these are already too numerous. People in difficulties would doubtless not fail to marry; for instance, a merchant placed by his pitiless creditor between marriage and a warrant.

To be transformed, re-made, remodelled, and changed in nature! A grand and difficult change! But there would be no merit in it, if it was not of one's free will, and only brought about by a sort of domestic persecution, or household warfare.

First of all, we must know whether transformation means amelioration, whether it be intended by transformation to ascend higher and higher in moral life, and become more virtuous and wise. To ascend would be well and good; but if it should be to fall lower?

And first of all, the wisdom they offer us does not imply knowledge. "What is the use of knowledge and literature? They are mere toys of luxury, vain and dangerous ornaments of the mind, both strangers to the soul." Let us not contest the matter, but pass over this empty distinction that opposes the mind to the soul, as if ignorance was innocence, and as if they could have the gifts of the soul and heart with a poor, insipid, idiotic literature!

But where is their heart? Let us catch a glimpse of it. How is it that those who undertake to develope it in others dispense with giving any proof of it in themselves? But this living fountain of the heart is impossible to be hidden, if we really have it within us. It springs out in spite of everything; if you were to stop it on one side, it would run out by the other. It is more difficult to be confined than the flowing of great rivers:—try to shut up the sources of the Rhone or Rhine! These are vain metaphors, and very ill-placed, I allow: to what deserts of Arabia must I not resort to find more suitable ones?

We are in a church: see the crowd, the dense mass of people who after having wandered far, enter here weary and athirst, hoping to find some refreshment; they wait with open mouths. Will there even be one small drop of dew?

No; a decent, proper, blunt-looking man ascends the pulpit: he will not affect them; he confines himself to proofs. He makes a grand display of reasoning, with high logical pretensions and much solemnity in his premises. Then come sudden, sharp conclusions; but for middle term there is none: "These things require no proof." Why, then, miserable reasoner, did you make so much noise about your proofs?

Well! do not prove! only love! and we will let you off everything else. Say only one word from the heart to comfort this crowd. All that variegated mass of living heads, that you see so closely assembled around your pulpit are not blocks of stone, but so many living souls. Those yonder are young men, the rising generation, our future society. They are of happy dispositions, full of spirit, fresh and entire, such as God made them, and untamed; they rush forward incautiously even to the very brink of precipices. What! youth, danger, futurity, and hopes clouded with fear—does not all this move you? Will nothing open your fatherly heart?

Mark, too, that brilliant crowd of women and flowers: in all that splendour so delightful to the eye there is much suffering. I pray you to speak one word of comfort to them. You know they are your daughters, who come every evening so forlorn to weep at your feet. They confide in you, and tell you everything; you know their wounds. Try to find some consoling word—surely that cannot be so difficult. What man is there who, in seeing the heart of a woman bleeding before him, would not feel his own heart inspired with words to heal it? A dumb man, for want of words, would find what is worth more, a flood of tears!

What shall we say of those who, in presence of so many desponding, sickly, and confiding persons, give them, as their only remedy, the spirit of an academy, glittering commonplaces, old paradoxes, Bonaparteism, socialism, and what not? There is in all this, we must confess, a sad dryness and a great want of feeling.

Ah! you are dry and harsh! I felt this the other day (it was in December last), when I read on the walls, as I was passing by, an order from the archbishop. It was a case of suicide; a poor wretch had killed himself in the church of Saint-Gervais. Was it misery, passion, madness, spleen, or moral weakness in this melancholy season? No cause was mentioned; the body alone was there with the blood on the marble slabs; but no explanation. By what gradation of griefs, disappointments, and anguish had he been induced to commit this unnatural act? What steps of moral purgatory had he descended before he reached the bottom of the abyss? Who could say? No one. But any man with a gleam of imagination in his heart, sees in this solemn mystery something to make him weep and pray. That man is not Mr. Affre: read the mandate. There is compassion for the blood-stained church, and pity for the polluted stones; but for the dead only a malediction. But, whether a Christian or not, guilty or not, is he not still a man, my lord bishop? Could you not, whilst you were condemning suicide, let fall one word of pity by the way? No, no sentiment of humanity, nothing for the poor soul, which, besides its misfortune (which must have been terrible, indeed, since it could not support it), departs all alone and accursed, to attempt that perilous flight of the other life and judgment.

Another very different fact had given me some time before a similar impression. I had gone on business to the house of the venerable Sister * * *.

She was absent; and two persons, a lady and an aged priest, were waiting, like myself, in the small parlour. The lady seemed actuated by some motive of beneficence: the priest, as they are lords and masters in every Religious house, seemed to be quite at home, and, to beguile the time, was writing letters at the sister's bureau. At the conclusion of every note, he listened to the lady for a moment. The latter, whose gentle face bore traces of grief, impressed one at once with the goodness of her disposition: perhaps she would not have attracted my attention, but there was something in her that interested me. Was it passion or grief? I overheard without listening—she had lost her son.

An only son, full of affection, spirits, and courage; a young hero, who, leaving the Polytechnic school, had abandoned everything, riches, high life, pleasure, happiness, and such a mother! And regardless alike of safety and danger, had rushed to Marseilles, thence to Algiers, to the enemy, and to death.

The poor woman, wholly occupied with this idea, snatched, from time to time, a little moment to put in a word; she wanted to speak to him, and appeal to his compassion. The scene was infinitely touching and natural, without any theatrical effect. Her moderate grief and sighs, without tears, affected me the more.

She was evidently wasting her breath. The thoughts of the priest were elsewhere. It was not possible for him not to listen; he was forced to say something or other (the lady was rich, and her carriage was waiting at the door); but he got off as cheap as he could: "Yes, Madam, Providence tries us. It strikes us for our good. These are very painful trials," &c., &c. Such vague and cold words did not discourage the lady; she drew her chair nearer, thinking he would hear her better: "Ah! Sir, how shall I tell you? Ah! how can you understand so heavy a calamity?" She would have made a dead man weep.

Did you ever see the heart-rending sight of the poor pointer, that has been wounded by a shot, writhing at his master's feet, and licking his hands, as if praying to him to help him? The comparison will