The young officer's emotion may be better conceived than described on discovering this new and unexpected coincidence in the history of his successful application to the intercession of ancient saints. SANCTI ABDON ET SENNEN, ORATE PRO NOBIS. ------ {24} From The Lamp. A PILGRIMAGE TO ARS. I went to Lyons for the express purpose of visiting the tomb of the Curé of Ars; for I knew the village of Ars was not very far from that city, though I had but a vague idea as to where it was situated or how it was to be reached. I trusted, however, to obtaining all needful information from the people at the hotel where I was to pass the night; and I was not mistaken in my expectations; but I must confess, to my sorrow, that I felt for a moment a very English sort of shamefacedness about making the inquiry. Put to the waiter of an English hotel, such a question would simply have produced a stare of astonishment or a smile of pity. A visit to the tomb of the Duke of Wellington at St. Paul's, or a descent into kingly vaults for the wise purpose of beholding Prince Albert's coffin, with its wreaths of flowers laid there by royal and loving hands these things he would have sympathized with and understood. But a pilgrimage to the last resting-place of a man who, even admitting he were at that moment a saint in heaven, had been but a simple parish-priest upon earth, would have been a proceeding utterly beyond his capacity to comprehend, and he would undoubtedly have pronounced it either an act of insanity or one of superstition, or something partaking of the nature of the two. I forgot, for a moment, that I was in a Catholic country, and inquired my way to Ars with an uncomfortable expectation of a sneering answer in return. Once, however, that the question was fairly put, there was nothing left for me but to be ashamed of my own misgivings. "Madame wished to visit the tomb of the sainted Curé?--_mais oui_. It was the easiest thing in the world. Only an hour's railway from Lyons to Villefranche; and an omnibus at the latter station, which had been established for the express purpose of accommodating the pilgrims, who still flocked to Ars from every quarter of the Catholic world."