“Well, merely this, Cousin George. In our church, whenever it is proposed to canonize as a saint a person of holy life, there is a member of the commission appointed to examine the case, whose duty it is rigidly to scrutinize all the testimony presented as to the holy life of the deceased, to require the strictest proof, and to present and urge every valid objection to its saintliness, such as charges of any irregularity or lapse in conduct, morals, or faith. This official, in short, is a sort of infernal prosecuting attorney, and has hence received the descriptive nickname of _advocatus diaboli_. Now, it appears to me, Cousin George, that, from the moment our conversation on the _Devout Life_ began, you have been plying his vocation pretty vigorously.” I could not deny it, so I said nothing, and allowed Gaston to go on. “No; so far from claiming perfection for the work, I will volunteer a criticism or two upon it. In the first place, there is an excess of symbolism, and the multitude of comparisons and images becomes fatiguing. Many of these images are full of grace and simplicity, especially those drawn from the writer’s observation of nature; for S. Francis of Sales, as we gather from this book, had a quick and sympathetic appreciation of the charm of landscapes, the song of birds, the fascination of flowers, and the thousand beauties of nature visible only to one who truly loves nature, and sincerely worships nature’s God. But there is an excess of all this; and when he gets beyond the line of personal sympathy and observation, the comparisons become stiff, and frequently violate good taste. Those drawn from natural history, for instance, are strained and incongruous. The writer must have found his Paphlagonian partridges with two hearts in Pliny. There are many things, too, which to us appear to be in excessively bad taste; but that is a defect not chargeable to the author individually, but to the prevalent style of the age in which he lived. After all, there are ‘spots on the sun.’ S. Francis of Sales did not write for fame as an author, nor, indeed, from any worldly motive. A ‘classic style’ and ‘the French Academy’ were inducements which never engaged his attention. There is nothing of the rhetorician in his phrase, for it is almost familiar in its ease and simplicity. But there’s the tea-bell, my dear George, probably a happy release for one of us, for I fear I have bored you dreadfully.” “On the contrary, my dear Dick, for I have been as much edified as interested in the saintly life you have revealed to me.” “Why, my dear boy, I haven’t told you the half of it; nor, indeed, do I know it thoroughly. But if it at all interests you, here it is.”