the bounds of life which is apparent, the cause, the explanation,
or the excuse for them. He seemed at times to be asking God to
commute these penalties. He examined without wrath, and with the
eye of a linguist who is deciphering a palimpsest, that portion
of chaos which still exists in nature. This revery sometimes
caused him to utter odd sayings. One morning he was in his garden,
and thought himself alone, but his sister was walking behind him,
unseen by him: suddenly he paused and gazed at something on the ground;
it was a large, black, hairy, frightful spider. His sister heard
him say:--

"Poor beast! It is not its fault!"

Why not mention these almost divinely childish sayings of kindness?
Puerile they may be; but these sublime puerilities were peculiar
to Saint Francis d'Assisi and of Marcus Aurelius. One day he
sprained his ankle in his effort to avoid stepping on an ant.
Thus lived this just man. Sometimes he fell asleep in his garden,
and then there was nothing more venerable possible.

Monseigneur Bienvenu had formerly been, if the stories anent
his youth, and even in regard to his manhood, were to be believed,
a passionate, and, possibly, a violent man. His universal suavity
was less an instinct of nature than the result of a grand conviction
which had filtered into his heart through the medium of life,
and had trickled there slowly, thought by thought; for, in a character,
as in a rock, there may exist apertures made by drops of water.
These hollows are uneffaceable; these formations are indestructible.

In 1815, as we think we have already said, he reached his seventy-fifth