"The child is a fool!" cried my father, closing the window. I felt anger and shame at hearing myself thus judged. But immediately I considered that my father, not being so holy as I, could never share with me the glory of the blessed, and this thought was for me a great consolation.

Every Saturday we were taken to confession. If any one will tell me why, he will greatly oblige me. The practice inspired me with both respect and weariness. I hardly think it probable that M. le Curé took a lively interest in hearing my sins; but it was certainly disagreeable to me to cite them to him. The first difficulty was to find them. You can perhaps believe me, when I declare that at ten years of age I did not possess the psychic qualities and the methods of analysis which would have made it possible rationally to explore my inmost conscience. Nevertheless it was necessary to have sins: for no sins, no confession. I had been given, it is true, a little book which contained them all: I had only to choose. But the choice itself was difficult. There was so much obscurely said of "larceny, simony, prevarication"! I read in the little book, "I accuse myself of having despaired; I accuse myself of having listened to evil conversations." Even this furnished little wherewith to burden my conscience. Therefore ordinarily I confined myself to "distractions." Distractions during mass, distractions during meals, distractions in "religious assemblies, "I avowed all; yet the deplorable emptiness of my conscience filled me with deep shame. I was humiliated at having no sins.

I will tell you what, each year, the stormy skies of autumn, the first dinners by lamplight, the yellowing leaves on the shivering trees, bring to my mind; I will tell you what I see as I cross the Luxembourg garden in the early October days-those sad and beautiful days when the leaves fall, one by one, on the white shoulders of the statues there.

What I see then is a little fellow who with his hands in his pockets is going to school, hopping along like a sparrow. I see him in thought only, for he is but a shadow, a shadow of the "me» as I was twenty-five years ago. Really, he interests me,—this little fellow. When he was living I gave him but little thought, but now that he is no more, I love him well. He was worth altogether more than the rest of the "me's" that I have been since. He was a happy-hearted boy as he crossed the Luxembourg garden in the fresh air of the morning. All that he saw then I see

to-day. It is the same sky, and the same earth; the same soul of things is here as before,- that soul that still makes me gay, or sad, or troubled: only he is no more! He was heedless enough, but he was not wicked; and in justice to him I must declare that he has not left me a single harsh memory. He was an innocent child that I have lost. It is natural that I should regret him; it is natural that I should see him in thought, and delight in recalling him to memory.

Nothing is of more value for giving a child a knowledge of the great social machine than the life of the streets. He should see in the morning the milkwomen, the water carriers, the charcoal men; he should look in the shop windows of the grocer, the pork vender, and the wine-seller; he should watch the regiments pass, with the music of the band. In short, he should suck in the air of the streets, that he may learn that the law of labor is Divine, and that each man has his work to do in the world.

Oh! ye sordid old Jews of the Rue Cherche-Midi, and you my masters, simple sellers of old books on the quays, what gratitude do I owe you! More and better than university professors, have you contributed to my intellectual life! You displayed before my ravished eyes the mysterious forms of the life of the past, and every sort of monument of precious human thought. In ferreting among your shelves, in contemplating your dusty display laden with the pathetic relics of our fathers and their noble thoughts, I have been penetrated with the most wholesome of philosophies. In studying the worm-eaten volumes, the rusty iron-work, the worn carvings of your stock, I experienced, child as I was, a profound realization of the fluent, changing nature of things and the nothingness of all, and I have been always since inclined to sadness, to gentleness, and pity.

The open-air school taught me, as you see, great lessons; but the home school was more profitable still. The family repast, so charming when the glasses are clear, the cloth white, and the faces tranquil,-the dinner of each day with its familiar talk,— gives to the child the taste for the humble and holy things of life, the love of loving. He eats day by day that blessed bread which the spiritual Father broke and gave to the pilgrims in the inn at Emmaus, and says, like them, "My heart is warmed within me." Ah! how good a school is the school of home! .

The little fellow of whom I spoke but just now to you, with a sympathy for which you pardon me, perhaps, reflecting that it is

not egotistic but is addressed only to a shadow,- the little fellow who crossed the Luxembourg garden, hopping like a sparrow,became later an enthusiastic humanist.

I studied Homer. I saw Thetis rise like a white mist over the sea, I saw Nausicaa and her companions, and the palm-tree of Delos, and the sky, and the earth, and the sea, and the tearful smile of Andromache. I comprehended, I felt. For six months I lived in the Odyssey. This was the cause of numerous punishments: but what to me were pensums? I was with Ulysses on his violet sea. Alcestis and Antigone gave me more noble dreams than ever child had before. With my head swallowed up in the dictionary on my ink-stained desk, I saw divine forms,— ivory arms falling on white tunics, and heard voices sweeter than the sweetest music, lamenting harmoniously.

This again cost me fresh punishments. They were just; I was "busying" myself "with things foreign to the class." Alas! the habit remains with me still. In whatever class in life I am put for the rest of my days, I fear yet, old as I am, to encounter again the reproach of my old professor: "Monsieur Pierre Nozièrre, you busy yourself with things foreign to the class."

But the evening falls over the plane-trees of the Luxembourg, and the little phantom which I have evoked disappears in the shadow. Adieu! little "me" whom I have lost, whom I should forever regret, had I not found thee again, beautified, in my son! Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature.'

FROM THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS >

RONY and pity are two good counselors: the one, who smiles, makes life amiable; the other, who weeps, makes it sacred. The Irony that I invoke is not cruel. She mocks neither love nor beauty. She is gentle and benevolent. Her smile calms anger, and it is she who teaches us to laugh at fools and sinners whom, but for her, we might be weak enough to hate.

WOMEN AND CHRISTIANITY

From The Garden of Epicurus,) translated by Alfred Allinson. Copyright by John Lane Co., and reprinted by their permission.

CH

HRISTIANITY has done much for love by making a sin of it. The Church excludes woman from the priesthood; it fears her, and thereby shows how dangerous she is. It repeats with the Ecclesiast: «The arms of a woman are like the nets of the hunters, laqueus venatorum.» It warns us not to put our hope in her: «Lean not upon a reed shaken in the wind, and put not your trust therein, for all flesh is grass, and the glory thereof passeth away like the flower of the fields.» It dreads the wiles of this pest of the human race: «All cunning is small beside the cunning of a woman's heart. Brevis omnis malitia super malitiam mulieris.» But by the very terror it betrays of her, it makes her strong and formidable.

To grasp the full significance of these maxims you must have lived with the mystics. You must have passed your childhood in a religious atmosphere. You must have gone into «retreat»; followed the observances of the Church. You must have read, at twelve years old, those little books of edification that reveal the supernatural world to simple souls. You must have known the story of St. Francis de Borgia gazing into the open coffin of Queen Isabella, or the apparition of the Abbess of Vermont to her daughters in Christ. The Abbess had died in the odor of sanctity, and the nuns, who had shared in her works of angelic piety, believing her in Heaven, were wont to invoke her in their prayers. But one day she appeared to them, with wan face and flames licking the border of her robe. «Pray for me,» she bade them; «in the days when I was alive, joining my hands in prayer, I thought what pretty hands they were. To-day I am expiating that sinful thought in the torments of Purgatory. Know, my daughters, the adorable goodness of God, and pray for me.» These little books of childish theology contain a thousand tales of the kind tales that give purity too exalted a price not to add an infinite zest to carnal pleasures.

In consideration of their beauty, the Church made Aspasia, Laïs, and Cleopatra into demons, ladies of Hell. What glory for them! Why, a saint would have appreciated the compliment! The most modest and austere of womankind, who has no faintest wish to destroy any man's peace of mind, would fain have the power to destroy all men's. Her pride is flattered by the precautions the Church takes against her.

When poor St. Antony shouts at her: «Begone, foul

beast!» his very alarm tickles her vanity deliciously. She is ravished to find herself more dangerous than she had ever suspected.

But never think too highly of yourselves, my sisters; you were not, at your first appearance in the world, perfect and fully armed. Your grandmothers of the days of the mammoth and the giant bear did not wield the same domination over the prehistoric hunters and cave men which you possess over us. You were useful then, and necessary, but you were not invincible. To tell the truth, in those far-off ages, and for long afterwards, you lacked charm. In those days you were like men, and men were like brutes. To make of you the fearful and wonderful thing you are to-day, to become the indifferent and sovereign cause of countless sacrifices and crimes, you still needed two things: Civilization, which gave you veils, and Religion, which gave you scruples. Since then your powers are perfected; you are now a mystery, and you are a sin. Men dream of you and lose their souls for you. You inspire longing and alarm; love's delirium has come into the world. Yes, it is an infallible instinct inclines you to piety. You are well advised to love Christianity. It has multiplied your puissance tenfold. Do you know St. Jerome? At Rome and in Asia you inspired him with such panic terror that he fled to escape you into a frightful desert. There he fed on roots, and the skin clung to his fleshless bones and was burnt black by the sun, yet he found you there also. His solitude was peopled with your phantoms, yet more alluring even than yourselves.

For it is a truth, only too well proven by the ascetics, that the dreams you excite are more seductive, if that is possible, than the realities you have in your power to offer. Jerome rejected with equal horror your presence and the remembrance of your presence. But in vain he gave himself up to fasts and prayers; you filled his life, from which he had expelled you, with hallucinations. Such was the power of woman over a Saint. I doubt if it is as great over an habitué of the Moulin-Rouge. Take heed your empire be not diminished along with men's belief in God; beware you do not lose a portion of your influence through ceasing to be a sin.

Candidly I do not think rationalism is good for you. In your place, I should not be overfond of the physiologists who are so indiscreet, who are so over ready to explain things to you, who say you are sick when we think you are inspired, and who attribute to the predominance of reflex actions your sublime potentialities for love and suffering. That is not the way they speak of you in the (Golden Legend>; «white dove,» «lily of purity,» «rose of love,» are the names