and hastened from the room, to prepare for Monseigneur, whether he
asked for it or not, a dish of her most excellent soup, to
strengthen and support him before starting on his journey. And ere
four o'clock had chimed from all the towers of the city, the Hotel
Poitiers was deprived of its honoured guest,--the Cardinal,
accompanied by his foundling, had departed, and the black, smoky,
snake-like train had rushed with them through the smiling peace of
the Normandy pasture-lands on towards the brilliant "city enthroned
in wickedness," which sparkles like a jewel on the borders of the
Seine as gloriously as ever Babylon sparkled on the shores of
Euphrates. As godless, as hollow to the very core of rottenness, as
her sister of ancient days, wanton "Lutetia" shines,--with the
ghastly and unnatural lustre of phosphorescent luminance arising
from old graves--and as divinely determined as the destruction of
the old-time city splendid, is the approaching downfall of the
modern capital. To the inhabitants of Rouen, the very name of Paris
carries with it a kind of awe,--it excites various emotions of
wonder, admiration, longing, curiosity and even fear,--for Paris is
a witches' cauldron in which Republicanism, Imperialism, Royalism,
Communism and Socialism, are all thrown by the Fates to seethe
together in a hellish broth of conflicting elements--and the smoke
of it ascends in reeking blasphemy to Heaven. Not from its church-
altars does the cry of "How long, O Lord, how long!" ascend
nowadays,--for its priests are more skilled in the use of the witty
bon-mot or the polished sneer than in the power of the prophet's
appeal,--it is from the Courts of Science that the warning note of
terror sounds,--the cold vast courts where reasoning thinkers
wander, and learn, and deeply meditate, knowing that all their
researches but go to prove the fact that apart from all creed and
all forms of creed, Crime carries Punishment as surely as the seed