doubt from your heart, strengthen your soul, or your hand will bear the sword for the warring Church of Christ in vain!" The abbé bowed his head. "Forgive the hesitation of a youthful heart," he said in a low voice, "I will wrestle and pray that I may be girded with the strong panoply of faithful obedience." The count looked at him kindly. "Pray to God," he said, "that your heart may be nerved and steeled, without having to pass through the pain and despair mine suffered before it attained to calm firmness and clear conviction." He stepped closer to him, and laid his hand upon his shoulder. "I too," he said in a gentle voice, "was young like yourself, I was cheerful and happy as you are, I had a wife whom my soul adored, I had a daughter two years old whose pure eyes seemed to me a greeting from heaven. I was a surgeon in Rome, my hand was skilful, riches streamed down upon me. I loved all mankind, when I put my arm around my wife and held my sweet child upon my knee. To help all who were suffering was my most holy endeavour, my thank-offering for all the happiness that God had bestowed upon me. And I had a brother," he added, with a dreamy look, searching amongst the memories of the past; "I loved him from his tenderest childhood, I was older than he, and I had formed his mind, and educated his heart. He was a disciple of the noble art of painting, that fair flower of my lovely country, and I saw with pride the creations of his pencil, in which the breath of genius lived, and which approached nearer and nearer to the great works of the ancients. It was a good and happy time. My brother wished to try his pencil on the highest and holiest subject art can create, the divinely blessed Virgin with the Child Jesus. My wife sat to him as a model, my child upon her lap was to represent the Divine Child. Was it a sin, a presumptuous crime? The great Raphael had painted the forms of earthly women for his madonnas, and yet the wonderful spirit of divinity had enlightened his eyes. I rejoiced, and was happy in the thought that by the hand of my brother all that I loved on earth might be united to do God service. I was absent long hours in the exercise of my profession," he continued in a gloomy voice, "and one day when I returned, they had vanished! My brother had tempted my wife away, or she him, I know not which--I know nothing except that they were gone, and that they had taken my innocent child with them, that her pure eyes might bring me no comfort in my loneliness!" He said the last words lower and lower, his eyes seemed far away, his features trembled with painful emotion. He sank down into an arm-chair as if exhausted, the abbé looked at him with much sympathy.