laxity of modern Christian customs, it was surely quite a fanatical
idea. Yet he had his own Church-warrant for such a rule of conduct;
and chief among the Evangelic Counsels writ down for his example was
Voluntary Poverty. Yes!--Voluntary Poverty,--notwithstanding the
countless treasures lying idle and wasted in the Vatican, and the
fat sinecures enjoyed by bishops and archbishops; which things exist
in direct contradiction and disobedience to the command of Christ.
Christ Himself lived on the earth in poverty,--He visited only the
poorest and simplest habitations,--and never did He set His sacred
foot within a palace, save the palace of the High Priest where He
was condemned to die. Much symbolic meaning did Cardinal Felix
discover in this incident,--and often would he muse upon it gravely.

"The Divine is condemned to die in all palaces," he would say,--"It
is only in the glorious world of Nature, under the sunlit or starlit
expanse of heaven, that the god in us can live; and it was not
without some subtle cause of intended instruction to mankind that
the Saviour always taught His followers in the open air."

There was what might be called a palace hard by, to which Bonpre had
been invited, and where he would have been welcome to stay as long
as he chose,--the house of the Archbishop of Rouen--a veritable
abode of luxury as compared with the Hotel Poitiers, which was a
dingy little tumble-down building, very old, and wearing a conscious
air of feebleness and decrepitude which was almost apologetic. Its
small windows, set well back in deeply hollowed carved arches had a
lack-lustre gleam, as of very aged eyes under shelving brows,--its
narrow door, without either bolts or bars, hung half-aslant upon
creaking rusty hinges, and was never quite shut either by day or
night,--yet from the porch a trailing mass of "creeping jenny" fell