brilliant overthrow of events is alone heard to give glory and immortality! After the Mass, monseigneur was heard in his turn, and related the efforts made at Rome to obtain the canonization of the defunct whose memory was then and there celebrated. He spoke of the hope which he cherished to see ere long the Curé d'Ars and his image among the glorified ones, and placed on those altars where public veneration had already given them a place. VII. After the ceremony was over, the priests and some of the pilgrims coming to the solemnity united in an old-fashioned feast at the house of one of the missionaries. {210} The day was passed in recalling the virtues and actions of the saint, while the crowd continued its homage and demonstrations. Nothing could be more striking than the appearance of the village of Ars during this _fête_. The spectator goes backward several centuries; he lives in the earliest age; legend becomes reality in his eyes, and the natural world is entirely forgotten in the consciousness of the supernatural that surrounds him. M. Renan speaks somewhere with contempt of times and populations for whom the natural and supernatural have no exact limit. Ars presents every day, and especially those days in which the saint is honored, the same character. The natural and supernatural touch and mingle. The multitude kneels, it intercedes, it asks; and sometimes, in the simplest manner, extraordinary favors are granted, which strike with wonder the Christians of our day, so much less habituated than others to the manifestations of the immaterial world. The church is always full; the tomb of the good pastor, recognizable by a black slab, covered perpetually by an eager crowd. Some are kneeling, others standing awaiting their turn, and prostrating themselves as soon as a vacant place offers itself. They dispute a corner of the tomb of the Curé d'Ars, as during his life they disputed a corner of his confessional or an end of his cassock. All pray, some weep, others kiss the funereal marble. Mothers bring their sickly children, and rest them on the slab. Paralytics and the lame take their places. Each one touches the tomb with his cross, his medals, or his beads, and carries it away persuaded of its renewed efficacy. Every object, every part of the church, bears the trace of what I may call a pious vandalism. The confessional, the pulpit in which the holy priest passed nearly all his life, are cut in a thousand places. Each one has chipped the wood to carry off a relic.