“There is something touching in the candour and simplicity with which the prince will sometimes converse of Saint Sulpice with the individual to whom I now allude: the only one of his class-fellows with whom he has maintained any degree of intimacy, and whom he has bound to himself by ties of the deepest gratitude. He is the Curé of Saint Thomas, one of the most simple-hearted and virtuous of men, and one whom, I think, it would much surprise were he to be told that the Prince de Talleyrand, in spite of his apostasy, had ever been taxed with foul falsehood and black treason, and all the other crimes which have been laid to his charge by the hackneyed writers of the day. In the eyes of the good man (and if ever there was a saint upon earth, it is he), M. de Talleyrand has never been guilty but of one fault, which he qualifies by naming it a _tort_, when, in a misguided moment, he left the Church for the allurements of the world; but nothing, however, can persuade the worthy curé that the prince would not have returned, had he not been prevented by his marriage. I know nothing more delightful than to listen to the conversation of these two old friends, most particularly when relating to the olden days, and to the _Séminaire_. The prince is really much attached to M. D——; and I remember his being highly incensed upon taking up a volume of some of the modern spurious memoirs, wherein the old curé was mentioned with ridicule, on account of his extreme simplicity. He told me the true story of the good man, which was there related in a garbled form, and which he, who was at Saint Sulpice at the time the adventure occurred, of course remembered well, and told _con gusto_. “It appears that the good curé, who all his life has been remarkable for his childlike simplicity and credulity, was known at the _Séminaire_ by the sobriquet of ‘_Providence_,’ which he had acquired from his readiness to believe in the intervention of Heaven, whenever the cause was a worthy one, however trifling it might appear, to vain, weak mortals like ourselves. He had risen one cold, snowy morning in December, to attend early matins at some church in the neighbourhood, and had dressed himself stealthily and in darkness, fearing to disturb his chum, M. de Sèze, who, worldling as he was, snored on, heedless that it was one of the most solemn festivals in all the year, the feast of St. Nicolas. Meanwhile, the good youth stole shivering down the stairs and through the gloomy streets, clasping his breviary beneath his arm, and repeating all the way most eloquent invocations to Our Lady of the Burning Brand, the patroness of charcoal burners, for a little of that warmth which she bestows so liberally upon her votaries, to enable him even to feel the beads of his rosary as he passed them through his stiffened fingers.