extraordinary to me that her intellect was by no means of a high order. Quite the contrary. Her taste, the whole bent of her nature, was the reverse of intellectual, and what intelligence she had was, as far as real culture went, almost unreclaimed. Her reading had been always of the most superficial, non-metaphysical kind; indeed, the aversion to what she called "hard reading" made her turn with perverse dislike from any book whose title threatened to be at all instructive. She had never taken a prize at school, partly because she was too lazy to try for it, but also because she had not brain enough to cope with the clever girls of her class. Mary was quite alive to her shortcomings in this line, indeed she exaggerated them, as she was prone to do most of her delinquencies, and always spoke of herself as "stupid." This she decidedly was not; but her intellectual powers were sufficiently below superiority to make her sudden awakening to the sublime language of mystical theology and her intuitive perception of its subtlest doctrines matter of great wonder to those who only measure man's progress in the science of the saints by the shallow gauge of human intellect. "How do you contrive to understand those books, Mary?" I asked her once, after listening to her quoting St. Bernard _à l'appui_ of some remarks on the Prayer of Union that carried me miles out of my depth. "I don't know," she replied with her sweet simplicity, quite unconscious of revealing any secrets of infused science to my wondering ears. "I used not to understand them the least; but by degrees the meaning of the words began to dawn on me, and the more I read, the better I understood. When I come to anything very difficult, I stop, and pray, and meditate till the meaning comes to me. It is often a surprise to myself, considering how stupid I am in everything else," she continued, laughing, "that I should understand spiritual books even as well as I do." Those who have studied the ways of God with his saints will not share her surprise. In our own day, the venerable Curé d'Ars is among the most marvellous proofs of the manner in which he pours out his wisdom on those who are accounted and who account themselves fools, not worthy to pass muster amongst men. But I am anticipating. Her meeting with Father Paul was the first goal in her new career, and from the moment Mary had reached it she felt secure of being led safely to the end.