those whom you have given to govern me in your name. And be sure that a
soul cannot sin in acting according to the orders and lights of its
spiritual father." But by the time she had entirely abnegated her
accountability she finds the easy rule of the Jesuits too lax, and for
her further humiliation and penance takes for her director a monk of one
of the barefooted orders--a coarse and ignorant Calabrian peasant, whose
austerity has given him a widespread reputation for sanctity.

There is something more than painful in the minute portrayal of the
degradation of mind, character, even temper, which occupies the latter
part of the book: it is repulsive, and it strikes us as overdone,
although we know of at least one similar instance in real life. But
Madame Gervaisais has been represented as an uncommon woman in every
way, and we are forced to allow the progress of undermining disease some
share in her abasement. The last ten or a dozen chapters and the
tragical conclusion are among the weaker portions of the book, which as
a novel has many defects. It is nevertheless an able performance, and
might be a useful one if people, as a rule, were not more eager for the
poison than the antidote. All the phenomena and experiences which are
unfolded like holy relics by Madame Craven's high-bred hands are
recognized by MM. de Goncourt, but they are differently accounted for.

In _Renee Mauperin_, another book by the same authors, which with
considerable cleverness has also many faults of construction and
development, we have a glimpse of the cheerful social aspect of the
Roman hierarchy through its intervention in mundane affairs. "The Abbe
Blampoix had neither parish nor curacy. He had a special vocation: he
was the priest of the world, the gay world, the great world.... His
voice was musical and his style flowery. He called the devil 'the prince
of evil,' and the Eucharist 'the divine aliment.' He abounded in
periphrases colored like sacred prints.... From time to time fashionable
phrases and colloquialisms of the day mingled in his spiritual
consolations, like bits of a newspaper in a book of devotion. He had
the odor of the century. His gown kept, as it were, the perfume of all
the pretty sins which had come near it.... Mothers consulted him before
they took their daughters to their first ball: daughters sought his
advice before going thither. He was the man from whom permission was
obtained to wear low-neck dresses--of whom on