We were in her pleasant morning room, a beautiful room, and the lace curtains were pushed aside to allow free ingress of air and sunlight. Between the windows hung two objects my mother most greatly cherished--one an enameled Petitot miniature, gold-framed, of a man in the flower of his youth. His hair, beautiful as the hair of Absalom, falls about his haughty, high-bred face, and so magnificently is he clothed that when I was a child I used to associate him in my mind with those "_captains and rulers, clothed most gorgeously, all of them desirable young men, ... girdled with a girdle upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to" ... whom Aholibah "doted upon when her eyes saw them portrayed upon the walls in vermilion_." The other is an Audran engraving of that same man grown old and stripped of beauty and of glory, as the leaf that falls and the flower that fades. The somber habit of an order has replaced scarlet and gold; and sackcloth, satin. Between the two pictures hangs an old crucifix. For that is Armand De Rancé, glorious sinner, handsomest, wealthiest, most gifted man of his day--and his a day of glorious men; and this is Armand De Rancé, become the sad austere reformer of La Trappe. My mother rose, walked over to the Abbé's pictures, and looked long and with rather frightened eyes at him. Perhaps there was something in the similarity to his of the fate which had come upon me who bore his name, which caused her to turn so pale. I also am an Armand De Rancé, of a cadet branch of that great house, which emigrated to the New World when we French were founding colonies on the banks of the Mississippi. Her hand went to her heart. Turning, she regarded me pitifully. "Oh, no, not that!" I reassured her. "I am at once too strong and not strong enough for solitude and silence. Surely there is room and work for one who would serve God through serving his fellow men, in the open, is there not?" At that she kissed me. Not a whimper, although I am an only son and the name dies with me, the old name of which she was so beautifully proud! She had hoped to see my son wear my father's name and face and thus bring back the lost husband she had so greatly loved; she had prayed to see my children about her knees, and it must have cost her a frightful anguish to renounce these sweet and consoling dreams, these tender and human ambitions. Yet she did so, smiling, and kissed me on the brow. Three months later I entered the Church; and because I was the last De Rancé, and twenty four, and the day was to have been my wedding-day, there fell upon me, sorely against my will, the halo of sad romance. Endeared thus to the young, I suppose I grew into what I might call a very popular preacher. Though I myself cannot see that I ever did much actual good, since my friends praised my sermons for their "fine Gallic flavor," and I made no enemies.