him to presage some approaching
calamity.

Thus, there are men whom fate has marked on the forehead with a fatal
stamp. The mysterious sign is not displayed at every time and before all;
but at certain epochs of life, when the unknown breath caresses the
predestinated or cursed head, the mark all at once appeals, like a tawny
light in the depth of night.

A curse! Fatality has moulded that man's brain, it has left its potent
impress on his skull.

--With what seal then am I marked? he cried. Is it that of reprobation
which God has stamped upon my face?

No, simpleton that thou art, it is the phosphorus of thy brain, which
catches fire from time to time.

IX.

DURING VESPERS.

"There is a beautiful girl of sixteen,
white as milk, rosy as a rose-bud, fresh
as a spring morning,--and chaste as
Vesta."

A. DELVAU (_Le Fumier d'Ennius_).

He went up into the pulpit, and preached a sermon on this text: "Blessed
are the pure in heart." He had prepared it the day before, previous to the
arrival of that enchanting player, and his thoughts had been since then too
occupied with very different subjects for him to search for another theme.

Bitter mockery! What could he say to these good people about hearts pure
and chaste? He tried, all the same, and said some excellent things. He
spoke above all about temptation, which, following the expression of a
Father of the Church, "is only, to commence with, an ant which tickles, and
finishes by becoming a devouring lion."

"Alas," he said, "how many, without meaning it, have been thus devoured,
beginning perhaps with this pious individual."

His sermon took great effect. An old woman wept, and several members of the
congregation appeared to sigh and think that it was a long time since they
had been devoured thus.

He had an inclination to laugh, as he came down from the pulpit, at the
words which he had just uttered on purity of heart, and he wondered that he
had been able to bring so much conviction and warmth to bear upon a subject
to which he was henceforth completely a stranger.

His own scepticism terrified him, and he saw that he had taken a long step
into evil Nevertheless he did concern himself at that, and from his place
near the pulpit he turned his impassioned gaze with more assurance on the
group of young girls.

Passion is a brutal level which equalizes us all. There remained in him
nothing more of the priest, there only remained the man f