trust, as simple as it was beautiful, to the altar of the Virgin,
sending all the rest to the bedsides of the sick and sorrowful, or
to the coffins of the dead. It never once occurred to him that the
"Cardinal's roses," as they were called, were looked upon by the
poor people who received them as miraculous flowers long after they
had withered,--that special virtues were assigned to them--and that
dying lips kissed their fragrant petals with almost as much devotion
as the holy crucifix, because it was instinctively believed that
they contained a mystic blessing. He knew nothing of all this;--he
was too painfully conscious of his own shortcomings,--and of late
years, feeling himself growing old, and realising that every day
brought him nearer to that verge which all must cross in passing
from Time into Eternity, he had been sorely troubled in mind. He was
wise with the wisdom which comes of deep reading, lonely meditation,
and fervent study,--he had instructed himself in the modern schools
of thought as well as the ancient,--and though his own soul was
steadfastly set upon the faith he followed, he was compassionately
aware of a strange and growing confusion in the world,--a
combination of the elements of evil, which threatened, or seemed to
threaten, some terrible and imminent disaster. This sorrowful
foreboding had for a long time preyed upon him, physically as well
as mentally; always thin, he had grown thinner and more careworn,
till at the beginning of the year his health had threatened to break
down altogether. Whereupon those who loved him, growing alarmed,
summoned a physician, who, (with that sage experience of doctors to
whom thought-trouble is an inexplicable and incurable complication)
at once pronounced change of air to be absolutely necessary.
Cardinal Bonpre must travel, he said, and seek rest and
minddistraction in the contemplation of new and varying scenes. With
smiling and resigned patience the Cardinal obeyed not so much the