They are somewhat idolatrous, these adorations, for those who say: “God is a Spirit and those who adore Him should adore Him in spirit and in truth.” But they are so human, they respond so well to our instincts and our misery. Surely, the first Christians in the purely spiritual flight of their faith, and when the teaching of the master was still fresh in their souls, did not encumber themselves with magnificence, symbols and images. Above all it was not terrestrial memories--the place of a martyr and an empty sepulchre--that preoccupied them; their Redeemer, they did not dream of seeking Him here, as they had seen Him detached forever from transitory things and hovering above in the serene light. But we--all of us, people of the West and North--are some centuries nearer to simple barbarism than the ancient society out of which the early Christians arose; in the Middle Ages, when the new faith penetrated our forests, it overshadowed a thousand primitive beliefs; let us acknowledge it is a small minority that is freed from those accumulated traditions to come again to an evangelical cult in spirit and in truth. And, moreover, when faith is extinguished in our modern souls it is still by that so human veneration for places and memories, that unbelievers like myself are affected with the touching regret for the lost Saviour. Oh! Christ, for whom all these crowds gather and weep; Christ, for whom this poor old woman, prostrated near me, licks the pavement, leaning against the flags her miserable heart whilst weeping delicious tears of hope; Christ, who holds me, me also, in this place, like her, in a vague, yet very sweet meditation. Oh if He was merely one of our brothers in suffering, now vanished in death, may His memory be adored, even so, for His long illusion of love, meeting again, and eternity. And may this place be also blessed, this unique and strange place which is called the Holy Sepulchre--even contestable, even fictitious if you please--but whither, for fifteen centuries afflicted multitudes have run, where hardened hearts have melted like the snows, and where now my eyes are ready to veil themselves in a last rapture of prayer--very illogical I know--but ineffable and infinite. In the evening, at nightfall, after I have wandered for a long while in the melancholy little streets, through the Saracen city, where the crowns of fire of the Ramadan begin to flame around the minarets of the mosques,--an attraction draws me slowly towards the Holy Sepulchre.