_Christmas._--Yesterday was spent in retreat, by way of preparing our hearts for the solemnities of the nativity; and I have kept a real old-fashioned vigil--a vigil of the middle ages. I wish you could have heard the joyful ring of all the bells of the city as midnight approached. At the cathedral, the clear tones of the smaller bells, like the voices of nuns in choir, and the great Bourdon among them, "like the chanting of a friar," as Longfellow says; the _carillon_, too, from St. Pierre; and then all the convent bells sounding from Carmel, the Oratory, the Filles de Marie, and La Miséricorde, and those of the Hospital, Le Grand Séminaire, etc., etc., are infinitely impressive in the stillness of the night--the prelude of a great joy, breaking in upon our meditation on the birth of Christ. When the bells were all hushed, the priest stood at the foot of the blazing altar; all the rest of the chapel was in darkness--not a taper in the choir. There was not a sound but the night wind. The saints on the walls, half revealed in their dim recesses, looked like the spirits of the old monks come forth at this mystic hour to guard the chapel their hands once raised. It was the second time I ever communicated at midnight mass, and I imagined my heart the manger in which the Infant Jesus came to repose. I thought, as I returned from the holy table to my _prie-dieu_, of the first tears of the Divine Babe, and that he bewailed my continued imperfections. "Ah! why should not thy tears," I exclaimed, "wash away my sins, that thou be not forced to shed also thy most precious blood! I, too, weep. I, who deserve to weep, join my tears to thine. O Virgin Mother! take back thy child! His presence makes me an object of horror to myself. His tears scald my very heart. His caresses are like arrows that pierce my soul. Thou alone canst console him; only clean hands and a pure heart should embrace spotless innocence. My spiritual vision is too weak to bear the Orient from on high. Yes, Mary, thou alone canst console him; for thou art immaculate. Embrace him for me--those hands and feet which will be pierced for me; and wipe away the tears that have commenced to flow but too soon." "Oh! blissful and calm was the wondrous rest That thou gavest thy God in thy virginal breast. For the heaven he left he found heaven in thee; And he shone in thy shining, sweet Star of the sea!"