d in an
outpouring of love.

"Te Deum laudamus!"

In the midst of this cathedral, black with kneeling men and women, the
chant burst forth like a light which gleams suddenly in the night, and the
silence was broken as by a peal of thunder. The voices rose with the
clouds of incense which threw diaphanous, bluish veils over the quaint
marvels of the architecture. All was richness, perfume, light and melody.

At the moment at which this symphony of love and gratitude rolled toward
the altar, Don Juan, too polite not to express his thanks and too witty
not to appreciate a jest, responded by a frightful laugh, and straightened
up in his reliquary. But, the devil having given him a hint of the danger
he ran of being taken for an ordinary man, for a saint, a Boniface or a
Pantaleon, he interrupted this harmony of love by a shriek in which the
thousand voices of hell joined. Earth lauded, heaven condemned. The church
trembled on its ancient foundations.

"Te Deum laudamus!" sang the crowd.

"Go to the devil, brute beasts that you are! 'Carajos demonios!' Beasts!
what idiots you are with your God!"

And a torrent of curses rolled forth like a stream of burning lava at an
eruption of Vesuvius.

"'Deus sabaoth! sabaoth'!" cried the Christians.

Then the living arm was thrust out of the reliquary and waved
threateningly over the assembly with a gesture full of despair and irony.

"The saint is blessing us!" said the credulous old women, the children and
the young maids.

It is thus that we are often deceived in our adorations. The superior man
mocks those who compliment him, and compliments those whom he mocks in the
depths of his heart.

When the Abbot, bowing low before the altar, chanted: "'Sancte Johannes,
ora pro nobis'!" he heard distinctly: "'O coglione'!"

"What is happening up there?" cried the superior, seeing the reliquary
move.

"The saint is playing devil!" replied the Abbot.

At this the living head tore itself violently away from the dead body and
fell upon the yellow pate of the priest.

"Remember, Dona Elvira!" cried the head, fastening its teeth in the head
of the Abbot.

The latter gave a terrible shriek, which threw the crowd into a panic. The
priests rushed to the assistance of their chief.

"Imbecile! Now say that there is a God!" cried the voice, just as the
Abbot expired.

THE AGE FOR LOVE

BY PAUL BOURGET

When I submitted the plan of my Inquiry Upon the Age for Love to the