Our Blessed Father heard of this, and being eager to apply a remedy chose his opportunity, and one day, when we were talking about sermons, quietly remarked that he was told I had taken it into my head to imitate the Bishop of Geneva in my preaching. I replied that it was so, and asked if I had chosen a bad model, and if he did not preach better than I did. "Ah," he replied, "this is a chance for attacking his reputation! But, no, he does not preach so badly, only the worst of it is that they tell me you imitate him so badly that his style is not recognisable: that you have spoiled the Bishop of Belley yet have not at all succeeded in reproducing the Bishop of Geneva. You had better, like the artist who was forced to put the name of his subject under every portrait he painted, give out that you are only copying me." "Well, be it so," I replied, "in good time you will see that little by little from being a pupil I have become a master, and in the end my copies will be taken for originals." "Jesting apart," he continued, "you are spoiling yourself, ruining your preaching, and pulling down a splendid building to re-fashion it into one which sins against the rules of nature and art. You must remember, too, that if at your age, like a piece of cloth, you have taken a wrong fold, it will not be easy to smooth it out." "Ah! if manners could be changed, what would I not give for such as yours? I do what I can to stir myself up, I do not spare the spur, but the more I urge myself on, the less I advance. I have difficulty in getting my words out, and still more in pronouncing them. I am heavier than a block, I can neither excite my own emotions, nor those of others. You have more fire in the tip of your fingers than I have in my whole body. Where you fly like a bird, I crawl like a tortoise. And now they tell me that you, who are naturally so rapid, so lively, so powerful in your preaching, are weighing your words, counting your periods, drooping your wings, dragging yourself on, and making your audience as tired as yourself. Is this the beautiful Noemi of bygone days? the city of perfect loveliness, the joy of the whole earth?" Why should I dwell more on his reproof? Sufficient to say that he cured me of my error, and I returned to my former style of preaching, God grant that it may be for His glory! UPON SHORT SERMONS. He highly approved of brevity in preaching, and used to say that the chief fault of the preachers of the day was lengthiness. I ventured to ask how that could be a fault, and how he could speak of abundance as if it were famine?