I. Poverty is of all the clerical virtues the one which I have practised the most faithfully. M. Olier had painted for his church a picture in which St. Sulpice was represented as laying down the fundamental rule of life for his clerks: _Habentes alimenta et quibus tegamur, his contenti sumus_. This was just my idea, and I could desire nothing better than to be provided with lodging, board, lights, and firing, without any intervention of my own, by some one who would charge me a fixed sum and leave me entirely my own master. The arrangement which dated from my settlement in the little _pension_ of the Faubourg St. Jacques was destined to become the economic basis of my whole life. One or two private lessons which I gave saved me from the necessity of breaking into the twelve hundred francs sent me by my sister. This was just the rule laid down and observed by my masters at Tréguier and St. Sulpice: _Victum vestitum_, board and lodging and just enough money to buy a new cassock once a year. I had never wished for anything more myself. The modest competence which I now possess only fell to my share later in life, and quite independently of my own volition. I look upon the world at large as belonging to me, but I only spend the interest of my capital. I shall depart this life without having possessed anything save "that which it is usual to consume," according to the Franciscan code. Whenever I have been tempted to buy some small plot of ground, an inward voice has prevented me. To have done so would have seemed to me gross, material, and opposed to the principle: _Non habemus hic manentem civitatem_. Securities are lighter, more ethereal, and more fragile; they do not exercise the same amount of attachment, and there is more risk of losing them. At the present rate this is a bitter contradiction, and though the rule which I have followed has given me happiness, I would not advise any one to adopt it. I am too old to change now, and besides I have nothing to complain of; but I should be afraid of misleading young people if I told them to do the same. To get the most one can out of oneself is becoming the rule of the world at large. The idea that the nobleman is the man who does not make money, and that any commercial or industrial pursuit, no matter how honest, debases the person engaged in it, and prevents him from belonging to the highest circle of humanity is fast fading away. So great is the difference which an interval of forty years brings about in human affairs. All that I once did now appears sheer folly, and sometimes in looking around me I fail to recognise that it is the same world.