There were three Marys--Mary of Bethania, Mary the sister of Lazarus, and Mary Magdalene; and some think they were all one person. Most of the early writers say that she and Lazarus and Martha left Galilee and settled at Bethany, and there Christ often visited them. The penitent woman and she are by some treated as the same person; but it is at best only a conjecture. It is a popular tradition that Mary and Lazarus, and Martha or Mary their sister, were expelled after the Ascension, and put to sea, and reached Marseilles, and founded a Church there, of which Lazarus was the first bishop. The relics of these saints were alleged to be discovered in Provence in the thirteenth century, and Mary Magdalene's were at St. Maximius, near Marseilles, where a convent now stands. Her festival is kept July 22nd, and once was a holiday in England. MARY MAGDALENE PREACHING. A Provençal legend states that after the Ascension Lazarus, with his two sisters Martha and Mary, Maximius and seventy-two disciples, also Cedon the blind man whom our Saviour restored to sight, and Marcella the handmaiden were put by the heathen in a vessel and set adrift; but, guided by Providence, it landed at Marseilles in France. The people were then Pagans, and refused to give the pilgrims food or shelter, so that they were fain to take refuge under the porch of a temple. And Mary Magdalene preached to the people, reproaching them for their senseless worship of dumb idols. And though at first they refused to listen, yet they were after a time convinced by her eloquence, and by the miracles she and her sister performed; and they were all converted and baptised. These things being accomplished, Mary Magdalene retired to a desert near the city, where there were only rocks and caves, and she devoted herself to solitary penance for thirty years, weeping and bewailing for the past. She fasted rigorously, and must have perished, but the angels came down from heaven every day and carried her up in their arms into regions where her ears were ravished with the sounds of heavenly melody, and where she beheld the glory and the joy prepared for the penitent sinner. One day, a hermit, having wandered near the spot, beheld this wondrous vision of the angels carrying the Magdalene up to heaven in their arms, and singing songs of triumph; and after recovering from his amazement, he returned to the city of Marseilles and reported what he had seen. Fra Angelico has a most interesting picture of the Magdalene preaching from the steps of a building to an audience composed mostly of nuns, who are in rapt attention. ACCOUNT OF ST. MARTHA.