French preachers do not gesticulate. They mount a little winding stairway, to a round narrow pulpit, with an umbrella-like baldaquin, in which their little figures white-robed, and with black pelerines, look like Chinese dolls. While the Italian priest, in his passionate ardour, smites his chest and thunders at the congregation, his French brother pronounces a calm, well-thought out speech, whose aim is to astonish by its brilliant wit and its fine subtlety. On this occasion, the sermon was on the subject of the cult of early Christian martyrs. It was, indeed, rather an historical lecture than a sermon. The preacher made a perfectly expressed and masterly exposition of various facts hitherto unknown to Irene, about the catacombs; the high honour in which the tombs of the first Christian martyrs were held, and the respect shown even to false martyrs, _i.e._, to deceased Christians, given out by their ambitious relatives as saints who had died for the Faith. These falsifications had, according to the preacher, assumed such enormous proportions, that it had been found necessary, in about the second century, to organize a special commission with the purpose of looking into the matter. “Et comme un faux gentilhomme est exclu de l’armorial,” added the preacher, a little irrelevantly, “ainsi ces faux martyrs furent bannis du martyrologe.” Irene listened with interest, but wondered a little how this scientific, historical, slightly satirical lecture could touch or help the souls of the listeners. In half an hour it was over, and Irene rose to go, when suddenly the altar was brightly illuminated, the organ began to play, and from the gallery floated the dulcet tones of the beautiful angel-voiced choir. Irene had never heard such passionate romantic singing, except at the opera. It awakened no religious inspiration in her; on the contrary, closing her eyes in complete enjoyment, caressed by the softness of those delicious waves of sound, she saw before her her once-idolized singer Battestini, in the title rôle of Rubinstein’s “Demon.” The unhappy “exiled spirit” was wandering in the desert, solitary, forsaken, heartbroken, hopelessly in love! “All the sorrow, all the suffering of life,” he sobbed passionately from the gallery, “is caused by solitude. Live together in couples! Love, caress, and comfort one another! And above all things, lose no time! Enjoy the delights of love, while you can!” The sound of dull, stifled sobbing fell on Irene’s ear. It emanated from a grey-haired old man beside her, who had fallen on his knees and buried his face in his hands. “He weeps because it is too late for him to love,” concluded Irene, as she glanced pityingly at the bent figure of the old man.