8. After the Retreat tell your Director your feelings and resolutions, and busy yourself immediately with drawing up your "règlement particulier." There are, moreover, retreats for eight days before each ordination. Exposition of the pontifical is given. Before the ordination of any individual is decided on, there are two "appels" to be gone through; 1st, that of outward conduct; 2d, that of inward conduct, decided by all the masters in common. If these are passed there is a third examination of himself and his fitness for the ministry to be gone through by the pupil in private. Fourthly, if he is thoroughly persuaded of his vocation, his confessor finally decides whether he shall be accepted for the ministry or rejected. The ordinary payment made by each pupil is 700 francs a year, but this, in case of necessity, or of promising persons, especially when recommended by bishops, is reduced to 400. In Lent one meal and one collation (a half meal) are allowed: the first at mid-day. Meat is permitted on Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, by the archbishop's "mandement." Fridays and Saturdays are maigre days through the year, but not fasts. The other fasts of the year are very few, the greater number having been abolished by the Concordat. They are Christmas Eve, Whitsun Eve, St. Peter's Eve, the vigils of the Assumption and All Saints. M. Gaduel told me that the good professors of S. Sulpice receive no salary whatever. They live, he said, as children in a father's house, provided with everything they want, but they are not given money. If one has need of a coat, he asks for it, and has it. Should they be taken ill, and be unable to continue their functions, they will be supported and tenderly provided for all their days. They take no vows, and can leave when they please; and they retain whatever private property they may possess. Those who have none receive 100 francs a year for their charities; for you know, he said, they cannot go into the city without a sou. Thus their life is entirely detached from the cares of this world, from the desire of wealth, and all that attaches to it. Yet is it, from its sedentariness and severely abstract pursuits, as well as from the continued pressure on the heart and conscience, a trying life. Health, I imagine, is only maintained by the weekly relaxation of Wednesday, and the annual vacation of two months in August and September. We talked on many other subjects with M. l'Abbé Carron. He was very desirous to explain the honour paid to the Blessed Virgin Mary. One and all reject with horror anything like adoration being offered to her, or that she is anything more than the most favoured _channel_ of grace.