s was the case also with his admirable treatment of
the international aspects of the story of the Maid of Orleans. There was
not a trace of Chauvinism in his citation of the simple and downright
message sent by the Pucelle to the English before Orleans. 'I have been
sent by God to throw you out of France.' Out of France she did throw
them. 'In this,' said the preacher, 'Jeanne d'Arc did a great service to
England as well as to France. The fair-haired nation of the North had
fought side by side with France, Coeur de Lion with Philip Augustus,
in the Crusades. When, therefore, the destined queen of the seas sought
to establish herself as a Continental power in the heart of Europe, the
Lord put in her way that grain of star-dust from Domremy, forced her
back to her vocation, and bade her content herself with being sovereign
on the ocean.'

I spoke of this allusion to the Jews with a most accomplished
ecclesiastic who dined at the Archi-episcopal palace. He was very much
pleased with it. 'One of the most mischievous things done,' he said, 'by
the present Government is that it is certainly fomenting--I cannot say
whether ignorantly or wilfully--a great deal of popular hostility to the
Jews by giving important official positions to men who, though
Israelites by blood, are in most cases no better Israelites than they
are Christians. Very nearly half the prefectures in France are filled by
such persons. When, as is too often the case, they carry out offensive
and tyrannical measures against the Catholic schools and congregations
in an unnecessarily offensive and tyrannical manner, it is very easy, as
you must see, for hasty or malevolent persons to persuade the people
that they do this because they are Jews, and as Jews hate the
Christians. I know that the best Israelites in France regret this as
much as I do. The policy of this Government is aimed as clearly at the
extinction of the Jewish as of the Christian faith; at the Grand Rabbis
as mercilessly as at the Archbishops of France.'

This same ecclesiastic gave me some particulars of the virulence with
which the anti-religious war is waged. He told me of one case of recent
date in Paris in which the authorities of a hospital neglected for two
days to pay any heed to the entreaties of a poor patient that they would
send for a priest to attend him, the doctors having given him to
understand that for him the end was near. The chaplains, it will be
remembered, have been expelled