The third was received with as many honours as the two previously appointed had been received with insults on their arrival. The French Church was closed, the Roman Catholic religion re-established, and the new priest returned to the old presbytery; the Grenadier became the most fervent and humble of his penitents, and the tongue of Cicero and Tacitus again became the dominical one of the Lévois, returned to the bosom of Holy Church. But Barthélemy wrote to me, a little time ago, that there were serious scruples in some weak minds. Were the infants baptised, the adults married, and the old people buried by the Abbé Ledru during his schism with Gregory XVI., really properly baptised and married and buried? It did not matter to the baptised souls, who could return and be baptised by an orthodox hand; nor again to the married ones, who had but to have a second mass said over them and to pass under the canopy once more, but it mattered terribly to the dead; for they could neither be sought for nor recognised one from another. Happily God will recognise those whom the blindness of human eyes prevents from seeing, and I am sure that He will forgive the Lévois their temporary heresy for the sake of their good intention. This event, and the conversion of Casimir Delavigne to the observances of the French religion, were the culminating points in the fortunes of the Abbé Châtel, primate of the Gauls. Casimir Delavigne, who gave his sanction to all new phases of power; who sanctioned the authority of Louis XVIII. in his play entitled, _Du besoin de s'unir après le depart des étrangers_; who sanctioned the prerogative of Louis-Philippe in his immortal, or say rather everlasting, _Parisienne_; Casimir Delavigne sanctioned the authority of the primate of the Gauls by his translation of the _Dies irœ, dies ilia_, which was chanted by Abbé Châtel's choristers at the mass which the latter said in French at the funeral service of Kosciusko. The Abbé Châtel possessed this good quality, that he openly declared for the people as against kings. Here is the poem; it is little known and deserves to be better known than it is. It is, therefore, in the hope of increasing its reputation that we bring it to the notice of our readers. It was sung at the French Church on 23 February 1831:-- "Jour de colère, jour de larmes, Où le sort, qui trahit nos armes, Arrêta son vol glorieux! À tes côtés, ombre chérie, Elle tomba, notre patrie, Et ta main lui ferma les yeux! Tu vis, de ses membres livides, Les rois, comme des loups avides, S'arracher les lambeaux épars: Le fer, dégouttant de carnage, Pour en grossir leur héritage, De son cadavre fit trois parts. La Pologne ainsi partagée, Quel bras humain l'aurait vengée? Dieu seul pouvait la secourir! Toi-même tu la crus sans vie; Mais, son cœur, c'était Varsovie; Le feu sacré n'y put mourir!