XIX. The Vicar’s Wife. Fragments.

I.

The Reverend Bartholomew Goodman, vicar of E... was the only representative of orthodoxy in that pretty little town of Devonshire. Though rheumatic, this salaried believer in apostolic succession was, correctly speaking, neither saint nor martyr. He had a wife and children, and, one year with another, his living brought him in about five hundred pounds.

He dogmatised but little, he would have feared to fail in respect towards his Alma Mater, the Anglican Church, in seeking to defend her, or prove that she only had the sole monopoly of the salvation of souls. Being no great theologian, but endowed with a simple soul and decidedly middling abilities, he contented himself with preaching to his flock the old story, as he was pleased to call the doctrine of Christ.

His sermons were very mediocre productions of the mind, in spite of the time he spent over their manufacture; and when his wife would pity him for all the labour they cost him, he would answer with a sigh: “My dear, it is true my sermons do take up a good deal of my time, but it is those who are obliged to listen to them that you should pity, and not me.”

This excellent man had his hobby, as indeed every Englishman has, especially if he be a bit of a theologian; he firmly believed that the English nation was none other than the ten tribes of Israel, who disappeared after the destruction of Jerusalem. The matter formed a never-ending subject of discussion for him, and when he chanced to come across a good soul ready to listen to him, he grew animated and almost eloquent over his theme. The idea was ever present with him, and if he retired to rest at night, beside his virtuous spouse, without having discovered some new proof of the identity of the House of Israel with the British nation, he would exclaim with Titus, “I have lost a day.”

Of all the domestic animals that drew breath about the vicarage there was not one more docile and useful, in the eyes of Mrs. Bartholomew Goodman, than the reverend gentleman, her husband.

The worthy lady had taken the management of the parish into her own hands. In her estimation, her husband was a good, well-meaning vicar, incapable of anything beyond the writing of his sermons. As these sermons were dull enough to send one to sleep standing up, and it was usual to listen to them in a sitting posture, their chance of doing good was but small. Besides, added Mrs. Goodman to herself, sermons never converted anybody yet. The blackest sinner does not recognise his own portrait in the descriptions of the lost that fall from the preacher’s lips. No, when the sermon is over, each hearer goes away very well satisfied with himself, simply reflecting on his homeward way: “Poor Smith! or poor Brown! how straight the vicar preached at him this morning!” It is always to one’s neighbour that the satires of the stage or the diatribes of the pulpit apply, and that is why no one thinks of getting angry at church or in the theatre.

To produce any effect upon the sinner, you must adopt arguments ad hominem; you must beard the animal in his den. This rôle of champion of the Church militant Mrs. Goodman had marked out for herself. Satan never found himself confronted with a more formidable enemy.

Mrs. Goodman, it should be explained, seemed to be built for battle: six feet high, alert and thin as a greyhound, with little piercing eyes, a complete and formidable-looking cage of teeth, an aquiline nose, curving boldly downward towards a long flat chin that it seemed to threaten one day to join; everything about this soldier of the faith denoted a resolution equal to the most arduous undertaking, a resolution that neither rebuffs, ridicule, nor danger could shake.

At the voice of his wife, the good vicar was wont to tremble with respect and apprehension.

In England, where wives are so docile, so respectful and submissive to their husbands, the wife of the clergyman seems to be an exception to the rule. It is easy to understand why. It is always more or less the garb that makes the monk. For us, the priest means the black cassock and the white surplice, that is to say austerity and innocence. Whether it be prejudice or not, it seems difficult to reconcile the idea of a priest’s life with that of a husband, even the most saintly husband on earth. You may call your wife your chaste spouse as much as you like, it will always mean that she is chaste towards others, that she is faithful to you; but after all, how shall I explain myself? Well ... I never heard that the children of the clergy fall from the moon into their mother’s arms: that is all I can say.

I never could understand that curious being, a married priest. I mean the veritable priest by vocation, the pastor of souls, the evangelist. We are not treating here of those clergymen who are savants, professors, writers, perfect gentlemen indeed, thorough men of the world, taking the expression in its best sense; still less are we treating of those clergymen who enter Holy Orders because it gives a good standing in life, and increases their chance of making a rich marriage, and who do not turn Mahometans, because the Mahometan faith is not fashionable in England, and would open up to a man no lucrative career.

The evangelical parson, who would be horrified at the idea of taking his glass of whisky without first having said grace over it, and who, in our opinion, can scarcely fail to accord to the bliss of matrimony less anticipated gratitude than he bestows on his glass of grog;[9] this man must appear strange indeed, incomprehensible to a woman who is witness of all his little failings—taking for granted that he has no defects, and of course no vices—to a woman, that little Argus-eyed observer, who is, I say, witness of a thousand actions which prove to her that this priest is only a man ... like other men. For us, on the contrary, a priest is not like other men; scarcely is he a man in our eyes. No, I cannot realise the idea; it is beyond my conception. The slit-up surplice that I dare not name, for, in shape, it is the most ridiculous-looking garment of a man’s wardrobe.... No, no! in the bedroom, this oracle and his wife must certainly be unable to keep their countenance.

This is not all.

The wife of a Protestant minister has a thousand and one occupations which render her important, and these occupations are more manly than those of her husband: she puts his theories into practice. He makes sermons and collections; she distributes alms, visits the sick, organises associations, fêtes, bazaars, concerts, lectures, tea-parties at a shilling a head; she is the dispenser of all the favours of the vicarage.

Now, place woman on a footing of equality with man, and her natural instinct will soon place her on a pedestal from which she will exercise authority overbearingly. I say overbearingly, for woman being born to be protected, when she takes the upper hand, does so like a parvenue; that is, fussily, indiscreetly.

This natural instinct Mrs. Goodman possessed in the highest degree; her husband could have given evidence upon the point.

The vicar’s wife had other reasons for believing herself superior to her husband. She was of aristocratic origin, and pretended to be descended from the Irish kings. For that matter, we may take the opportunity of remarking that we have not yet met with any Irish people that were not descended, in a straight line, from the ancient kings of Ireland. If we were to believe the excellent Hibernians, our Louis XII. never half so well earned the title of Father of the People as these old monarchs of Erin. The exploits of Hercules are mere child’s play by the side of the tours de force of those lusty Celts.

Proud of her ancestors, Mrs. Goodman often reminded the poor pastor of his obscure birth. “I ought to be the wife of a bishop,” she would sometimes say to him, when he did not seem sufficiently lost in admiration before her. “Alas, would that you were, my dear!” thought the worthy man. And as he was good-natured and had no reason for wishing harm to the chief of his diocese, the wish died on his lips and was almost inaudible.

We believe we have said enough to prove that the Rev. Bartholomew Goodman found his purgatory in this world, which must have been, for his Christian soul, a great consolation and even a source of joy, since the Protestant religion does not admit of the existence of this place of purification in the next.

II.

One morning in the spring of the year 188... Mr. Goodman, vicar of the parish of All Angels, sat in his study writing his two sermons for the following Sunday.

As we have said elsewhere, sermons are read from the pulpit in England; at least, this is the practice of Anglican clergymen, and we have explained the reason why.

Now, as for centuries past, the hundreds of religious reviews, magazines, and newspapers, have been publishing sermons, when a clergyman has a rather limited allowance of imagination, these periodicals furnish him with the materials for edifying the faithful on Sundays; he has but to copy old sermons. For proof of this, you need only take a peep at the great reading-room of the British Museum any Saturday of the year. Every seat is monopolised by the ministers of the hundred and odd religious sects who have set themselves the task of wiping out from the registers of the next world the thousand and one little stains that John Bull has contracted in this. It is a sight worth looking at to see them poring over old dusty volumes, from which is to be extracted the balm that is to give fresh life to the flocks confided to their care. While listening to the scratching of these hundreds of quills as they flew over the paper I have sometimes said to myself: “Some folks earn their salaries easily.” And yet the public good should be the first consideration, and, after all, I do not know that there is any harm about copying a sermon. On the contrary, why not follow the advice that Voltaire gives in the Dictionnaire Philosophique, at the chapter of Eloquence? This is what he says after having spoken of Massillon: “Such masterpieces are very rare; besides, everything has become common-place. Those preachers who cannot imitate these great models would do well to learn them by heart, and (supposing they have that rare gift, a talent for declamation) recite them to their congregation, piece by piece, instead of holding forth in a wearisome manner upon themes as stale as uninstructive.”

The regular Saturday visitors of the British Museum are quite of the same opinion, only, as to commit to memory two sermons a week, and sometimes more, would take up too much of the precious time that they owe to the spiritual family that have to be fed with the Word of Life, they copy them off, and read instead of reciting them: it is an economy of labour.

“Whenever I wish to move my hearers,” said a worthy parish priest one day, “I repeat some Massillon to them.”

But the fact is that pulpit eloquence is not much encouraged in England. A really eloquent preacher would approach too nearly to the actor to please a people so susceptible in religious matters. He would not inspire confidence. The Englishman likes dogma before all things; torrents of eloquence, à la Bossuet, would make him look askance at the preacher; phrases polished and studied like those of Flechier, expressions elegant and graceful, like those of Massillon, would awaken suspicions in his mind; what he prefers is argument pure and simple, and leaves to the lower orders the pleasure of being terrified by revivalists.

We were speaking of English pulpit eloquence one day to an important member of the political world. “English pulpit eloquence!” said he to me, “we have none.”

——“Yet, I heard Canon X. preach in the Abbey the other day,” I said, “and I assure you I never heard anything more graceful; he fascinated me. He is an eloquent preacher at all events.”

——“Yes,” replied he, “Canon X. is a very good speaker, it is true ... but, my dear sir, if he could only hold his tongue, he would be a bishop.”

The canon in question has just been made a bishop after all; but only a colonial bishop at the antipodes. If our English readers recognise him, I offer them the primeur of the anecdote.

Our good Vicar had just copied out his morning sermon; but as he wanted, in the evening, to thunder from the pulpit against romanism, ritualism, methodism, socinianism, secularism, materialism, and all those evils in ism, which, added to his rheumatism, rendered his existence almost intolerable, he was, at the moment mentioned at the opening of the chapter, just in the fire of composition. He wanted to take his congregation by storm, and, like Calchas, he was preparing his thunder.

But it was chiefly the Salvation Army that aroused his ire; it was for these Sabbath breakers, that would come and shout and gesticulate under his very windows, yelling blasphemous songs, accompanied by trombones, cornets, concertinas, drums, and tambourines: it was for these that he reserved his most powerful batteries and his avalanches of anathemas.

He had chosen as his text for the occasion, the fifth verse of the sixth chapter of the gospel according to St. Matthew: “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues, and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men.”

The good clergyman would have liked to take for his text merely the latter part of this verse, for in the depths of his honest heart, it seemed to him that this verse in its integrity ought to be interpreted thus: “When thou prayest, do not as the hypocrites do, neither pray in the temples nor in the streets,” that is to say, “Pray not in public to be seen of men.” And he knew very well that this interpretation of it was corroborated in the following verse, which says: “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and pray to thy Father which is in secret.”

The Holy Scriptures in English seem to be so written that each sect shall be able to take that which suits its theories, and reject all that does not. It is thus that the hundred and eighty-four religious beliefs of England are founded upon the Scriptures, and that out of the same Scriptures each of them condemns its hundred and eighty-three rivals.

Yet, in spite of this, all these self-styled seekers after the truth live in peace, in perfect harmony. The nation is so accustomed to liberty that religious eccentricity appears to them a simple and natural thing. But the ministers of all the denominations agree to differ from the Gospel on the matter of meeting together in public to pray. Their unanimity on this point is easy to understand. Indeed, what would become of the priests and the lawyers, if every man were free to plead his own cause before God and men? Besides, so long as man is human, he will always be pleased to have an occasion of advertising his virtue, and he who would make a short prayer in his closet with the door shut, makes a very long one in the temple, before his fellow-creatures whom he edifies with his piety.

The Vicar, with his head buried in his hands, was absorbed in the deepest reflections, when the door of the library was opened suddenly, and Mrs. Goodman entered hurriedly, a book in her hand.

This book was a copy of the New Testament, revised and corrected by the Commission for the revision of the Holy Scriptures.

“Well, this is a pretty state of things!” cried that lady breathlessly, as she dropped into an easy chair.

——“What is the matter, my dear?” asked the Vicar.

——“What is the matter! What is the matter indeed! A pretty question to ask! The matter is that we are ruined; that before very long, thanks to the bishops and the rest, whose business it is to look after the interests of our Holy Church, the country will soon be full of materialists and infidels.”

——“Come, come; what is all this about, my dear?” said the reverend gentleman quietly.

——“What is it about! Ah! my dear, it is easy to see you are paid by the State, from the way in which you take things. There, read that, and see what you think of it. It’s a very pretty state of things truly! What is it coming to? Who is to be trusted? We are betrayed, swindled, lost....”

——“But, my dear, once more, who is it you are so bitter against? I cannot see what can have put you into such a state of mind.”

——“Ah! really! You don’t see that, instead of keeping that precious phrase that sums up Christianity: ‘What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul,’ the New Version has: ‘What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own life’?”

——“I see it very well; but read the reference: or his soul. You have not looked at the foot of the page.”

——“That hesitation only makes the matter worse. The translators had much better have said frankly what they mean.”

——“The Greek word psuche signifies soul as well as breath, life.”

——“Much I care for your Greek,” cried Mrs. Goodman, indignant. “Do your congregation know anything about Greek? What will they think of us? That for centuries past, the Church has been deceiving them and making them pay tithes for nothing. Can’t you see that this change is tantamount to saying there is no hell? Just as well say that our Saviour never spoke of the other world, that everything He said applies to the life here below, and that His precepts were only given to teach the people to be happy in this world. It is frightful to think of! We must not be surprised at anything after this. The next thing I shall expect to see, is the bishops rallying round the Unitarians and denying the divinity of Christ. That there is no such place as purgatory, I am quite ready to admit; but if there is no hell, while I am in Heaven, where will the sinners be, my poor Barty? where will the sinners be?”

This little pet name, that the worthy lady only called her husband by on great occasions, made the good Vicar feel sure that his wife had come to him to seek some consolation. He accordingly set about trying to pour balm on her wounds.

“Calm yourself, my dear wife,” he said to her; “calm yourself. To tell you the truth, I attach but a secondary importance to the New Testament, and you know it; this is between ourselves. We are Christians undoubtedly; but our glorious origin, traced from the Old Testament, is a title much more sacred to us. So that we are descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that we are the chosen people of the Lord, what matters anything else to us?”

And in this matter the reverend gentleman was right. The religion of the English is more Jewish than Catholic, and it might safely be affirmed that an Englishman of the old school would sooner suffer one to speak jokingly of any of the saints than of one of the characters of the Old Testament, even though it might be Mrs. Potiphar, or one of the ladies of the Lot family.

“No, my dear,” continued the Vicar; “be sure that no harm can befall us. We are the just and holy nation, the heritage of the Lord.”

——“That is all very well ... for the future world,” replied Mrs. Goodman; “but for the present, I do not see how you are going to explain to the congregation a change that appears to me to overturn the structure of our Church completely. If we do not maintain our precepts, we are done for. The Church should be consistent. Look at the Pope: with his dogma of infallibility, he is still on his throne.”

——“After all, my dear, if one did away with hell, there would be no great harm done, and our greatest dignitaries of the Anglican Church are of this opinion, you know.”

——“Do away with hell!” cried Mrs. Goodman; “if you take that line, we may as well shut up the Church.”

——“You excite yourself for nothing, my dear, and you are wrong to express yourself in such a way.”

——“Protest then.”

——“Against whom, against what would you have me protest? The authorities of the Church have decided the alteration; we subalterns have but to bow to their decision. Besides, I shall tell my congregation that in the New Version life means future life.”

——“Very good, Barty; a good idea, for, be sure of it, you can’t get on without any hell: it is the fear of the devil that keeps the masses in submission.”

——“My dear wife, I assure you once more, that if there is a hell, it matters not to us: the House of Israel—that is to say, the British nation—will be saved to the last soul.”

——“And the others?”

——“What others?”

——“Why, the French, the Germans, the Italians, the Chinese, and the rest. What will become of them? Won’t there be any of them in Paradise?”

——“A few perhaps, but in very inferior places, you may be sure.”

——“Who dies will see,” said Mrs. Goodman.

——“Just so; make yourself comfortable; calm yourself, and have no fear for the future. And now let me finish my sermon for to-morrow.”

——“Don’t talk to me of your sermons; you have enough of them, there in your cupboards, to preach from, for the rest of your days.”

——“My dear, it is a sermon of my own composition that I am preparing.”

——“That will be a treat for the congregation! Come, put away all that, and drive me to the station; the carriage is ready.”

——“It is impossible, my love; I have several letters to write.”

——“You can write them to-morrow.”

——“You would not have me write letters on a Sunday!” cried the Vicar.

——“Can’t you date them the day before? Really, Barty, I did not think you were so simple as that.”

——“Besides,” added the worthy Mr. Goodman, “I have several places to go to, a lot of bills to pay: the tradesmen are bothering me....”

——“Send them some tracts to remind them that humility and patience are Christian virtues.”

——“That does not pay in these days.”

——“Whose fault is it? How can you expect that those people will believe in you, when you don’t believe in yourselves?”

——“My dear, my dear, I beg you will not renew that subject. You give me a headache. Come, you are right to make me go out; I will drive you to the station.”

Of all the tasks Mrs. Goodman set her husband, the one the reverend gentleman dreaded most was driving out his model wife. The thought of being able to return alone, and finish his sermon in peace, however, made him put a cheerful face upon it.

The station was four miles distant from the vicarage, and part of the journey consisted of a long steep hill to climb.

Mrs. Goodman, in her quality of member and agent of the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals, never failed to make her husband alight at the foot of the hill. “You are not going to make poor Bob drag you up?” said she: “get down and walk: you get stouter every day; a walk will do you good.” The poor Vicar, heavy and asthmatical, alighted, and puffing, coughing, and breathless, he followed as best he could to the top of the hill, regretting as he went that husbands were not included among the animals protected by the Society.

Arrived at the station, he took a ticket, placed his wife comfortably in the corner of a carriage, and was about to quit the station, when that lady called out to him: “Barty, be sure you don’t forget to walk when you come to the hill.”

“Certainly, my dear,” said the good parson, whom the sight of his wife, starting in a direction opposed to that of the vicarage, rendered facetious; “if you like, I’ll put Bob in the carriage, and push behind ... and the Society for the Protection of Animals will award you a gold medal at least.”

The engine whistled. The Vicar waved his hand to his wife, and returned to his carriage, promising himself to do the return journey at a good pace.

At the foot of the hill, Bob turned his head, according to his wont, to see if his load were going to obey the injunctions of his benefactrice; he even went so far as to bring up, in order to allow the Vicar to get down more comfortably; but that gentleman pretended not to understand the proceedings of the intelligent animal; he even administered to Bob two or three sharp strokes of the whip, which made him grow reflective. Mrs. Goodman’s protégé thought it prudent to step out a little more smartly, and in less than half an hour he had got over his four miles.

The Vicar had his horse put in the stable, the carriage in the coach-house, ordered tea to be taken to him in his library, and to his great satisfaction, was able to terminate the sermon that had been ruminating in his mind so long.

III.

In the parish of All Angels, the children of the poor went every Sunday to a Bible-class held in the church schoolroom.

The first class was under the direction of the Vicar’s wife. Proceedings commenced at three with prayer; then a hymn was sung, and the classes began.

In these Sunday classes, passages of the Bible are read and explained to the children by the teacher.

On the Sunday in question, Mrs. Goodman had chosen as the subject of her lesson the twenty-eighth chapter of Isaiah. As soon as the hymn was over she began to read:

“Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower....

“Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which as a tempest of hail and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand.

“The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden under feet.”

“You have heard the marvellous words of the great prophet,” cried the worthy lady. “Well, my dear children, Isaiah meant to say, that God would punish man’s wickedness, vanity and sensuality, and all these prophecies have been fulfilled. That city of gold means Paris, the new Babylon; the crown of pride means France. The strong and mighty one is the Emperor of Germany, who, ever since the day on which he married his son to the daughter of our beloved queen, has had the blessings of the Lord showered upon him.

“This interpretation of the passage I have just read you was the one presented by the dear lamented Dr. Macleod to our gracious sovereign, and Her Majesty was pleased to consider that the words of Isaiah were quite wonderful for the way in which they seemed to describe France. What need have we of a surer authority?

“And, indeed, is it not easy to recognise at a glance that proud and perverse nation which does not even keep the Sabbath holy? Do you know, my dear children, that these Sabbath-breakers hold horse-races and go to theatres on Sundays? Yes, you can scarcely believe it—our upright, honest minds refuse to believe in such monstrous iniquity—yes, newspapers are printed, bought, and read on Sundays. I even saw once, though I could scarcely believe my eyes—I positively saw in the public gardens, on that sacred day, little boys and girls of the better classes playing with their hoops and dancing in front of their parents, who seemed to see no harm in it whatever. It is the abomination of desolation, and I do not hesitate to say it: the Jews and Mussulmans are better than such people; for, after all, if they do not worship the Saviour, at least they worship God. I prefer the savages, who worship the sun, to these infidels who worship nothing at all, and just go down on their knees before a few candles to save appearances.”

——“Please, ’m,” said one little maid timidly, “papa says that the French are Christians.”

——“No, my child, they are papists, which is quite another thing. Most of them are nothing at all. Those who believe in the Pope give him money and receive of him, on a certain day fixed in advance, plenary indulgences that allow them, up to that time, to offend God as much and as often as they please. I am sure your papa would not apply the name of Christian to such pagans. But, make your mind easy, dear; I will go and talk with your papa one of these days.

“Then,” continued Mrs. Goodman, “see what is the result: the day of vengeance and chastisement arrives. A handful of English soldiers annihilates millions of the French: the hordes of Bonaparte are overwhelmed by the few soldiers of the Duke of Wellington.

“And why?

“Ah, why! Because our noble soldiers believed in God and prayed to Him.”

——“Oh! ma’am,” then cried another little girl, “haven’t those wicked French people any prayers?”

——“I can scarcely tell you, my dear child, but I doubt it very much. And even if they had,” said the worthy lady, not in the least disconcerted, “you may be sure that the Lord has something else to do besides listening to such rubbish. For prayer to have any effect, the supplicant must have grace, that is, he must have received permission to lay his supplication at the feet of his Maker. And this grace we only,—we, a God-fearing nation, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we the chosen children of the Lord, have in abundance. We are the allies of the God of Israel who has said: ‘The children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant.’ And again: ‘Moreover also I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them.’

“Now, I ask you, who is it that observes the Sabbath? First, there are the Jews. Then the English and Americans. As I have already explained to you, and as the Vicar has many times proved to you in the pulpit, the Americans are none other than the tribe of Manasseh, and the Jews are all that remain of the perverse tribes of Judah and Levi. The English are therefore the children of the house of Israel. Yes, my children, it is a glorious fact, and you may well be proud of it. So keep your covenant with the Lord who will always recognise you by this sign. I know wicked children who laugh and play on Sundays. Avoid their bad example, and you will one day go to the realms of the blessed, where there reigns an eternal Sabbath.”

The last phrase did not produce in Mrs. Goodman’s pupils the enthusiasm she looked for. Many of them grew reflective over it, as visions of scoldings, punishments, solemn silence, stern looks, and tract-reading, presented themselves to their memory and formed anything but an attractive subject of contemplation.

One little girl even went so far as to burst into a torrent of tears on reaching home.

“What is the matter, my darling?” asked her mother.

——“Oh! mamma,” cried the poor child, bathed in tears, “Mrs. Goodman says in heaven it’s Sunday all the week.”

——“Well, what then?”

——“Oh!” sobbed the distressed innocent, “if I am a very good girl all the week, shan’t I be allowed to go down to hell to play with the little devils on Saturdays?”

It is time I should say that Mrs. Goodman is not at all an imaginary character. I have had the pleasure of enjoying the excellent lady’s company many times. On these occasions, I have had explained to me how the history of Napoleon can be plainly read in the Apocalypse of Saint John, how all the great historical events, from the battle of Hastings down to that of Tel-el-Kebir are spoken of as inevitable by Isaiah, Ezekiel, and other prophets.

You can explain everything with the help of the Bible: as its name indicates, it is the book par excellence. I have heard educated people, apparently in possession of their mental faculties, tell me that the victories of General Wolseley in Egypt were foretold in the third chapter of Jeremiah and the eighteenth verse. I must tell you that this was before the successes of the Mahdi.

However, among all the prophets, it is Isaiah that bears off the palm. The Vicar of All Angels passed a whole evening in showing me the French Revolution under quite a novel aspect, by the aid of the sixty-six chapters of Isaiah.

Mrs. Goodman also taught history to her Sunday School class, after the same fashion, Bible in hand.

It seems to me an error to seek to put the religious convictions of children to the proof. Those castles of abstractions that they build out of obedience must give way at the first shock. The thousand little fibs that are told to children, with a worthy intention, no doubt, cannot fail sometimes to sow in their souls profound impressions and doubts that are not easily uprooted. I speak from the experiences of my own childhood.

It was on a Sunday, in the month of June, 1856, at the time of the grand fêtes at Cherbourg. I was to make my first communion the Sunday following! Heaven knows how I prepared for it with all the fervour of my young soul; how I prayed constantly for faith; how I returned to the tribunal of penitence twice and thrice daily, fearing lest I might have left some small peccadillo unconfessed. On the Sunday in question, we were about thirty children assembled in the church for catechism. The curé, who was present, begged the priest to let him say a few words to us: “My dear children,” he began, “I have a great piece of news to announce to you. His Majesty the Emperor is at present in Cherbourg. Next Sunday, the day of your first communion, he will be passing through this town, and he invites you all to dine with him.” We looked at each other in silence, and if we had not been in such a sacred place, we should certainly have jumped with joy. As soon as I got home, I imparted the great news to my mother. My good mother, who saw that I was almost smacking my lips in advance over the thought of the tartes à la crême that the Emperor could scarcely fail to offer us, and who was always of opinion that you should never disappoint children if you would gain their confidence, merely replied: “Really? it is an extraordinary thing! After all, it is a capital idea of the Emperor’s! But unfortunately, emperors are folks whose time is very much occupied, and it may happen that he should have to return to Paris before being able to keep his engagement. But, make your mind easy, we will invite your aunt, godmother, and our friends, and we will celebrate the day worthily, so that you may not forget it, I will promise you that.” My dear mother knew that we had been deceived. I had swallowed the pill confidently.

On the following Thursday, we met together again for catechism. Seeing the curé among us, we expected he had come with some fresh announcement, and we lent an attentive ear to what might be coming. And indeed, no sooner had we all taken our seats, than he rose, and, addressing us, said: “My dear children, I have a great and glorious piece of news to tell you to-day. I told you last Sunday that the Emperor invited you all to dine with him on the day of your first communion. Well, it is something better than that: it is not the Emperor, it is God who on Sunday next will receive you at His table.”

Was it the fault of the priest, or of children eleven years old, that, at this announcement, all our little round faces lengthened visibly? We had been imposed upon. That was the idea that we dared not confess to ourselves, though it was undoubtedly present in our minds.

I remember hearing my mother say, years afterwards, that she had never forgiven that priest for sowing seeds of doubt in my mind, at an age when confidence is unlimited and deceptions so acutely felt.