ytery was redolent of mignonette.
Behold what we may come to and how feeble we are! Not without reason do
we say that all our natural inclinations lead us towards sin! The man
of God had succeeded in guarding his eyes, but he had left his nostrils
undefended, and so the devil, as it were, caught him by the nose. This
saint now inhaled the fragrance of mignonette with avidity and lust,
that is to say, with that sinful instinct which makes us long for the
enjoyment of natural pleasures and which leads us into all sorts of
temptations.

Henceforth he seemed to take less delight in the odours of Paradise and
the perfumes which are our Lady's merits. His holiness dwindled, and
he might, perhaps, have sunk into voluptuousness and become little by
little like those lukewarm souls which Heaven rejects had not succour
come to him in the nick of time.

Once, long ago, in the Thebaid, an angel stole from a hermit a cup of
gold which still bound the holy man to the vanities of earth. A similar
mercy was vouchsafed to this priest of the Bocage. A white hen scratched
the earth about the mignonette with such good-will that it all died.

We are not informed whence this bird came. As for myself, I am inclined
to believe that the angel who in the desert stole the hermit's cup
transformed himself into a white hen on purpose to destroy the only
obstacle which barred the good priest's path towards perfection.

M. PIGEONNEAU

TO GILBERT AUGUSTIN-THIERRY

I have, as everybody knows, devoted my whole life to Egyptian
archaeology. I should be very ungrateful to my country, to science, and
to my-self, if I regretted the profession to which I was called. In my
early youth and which I have followed with honour these forty years.
My labours have not been in vain. I may say, without flattering myself,
that my article on _The Handle of an Egyptian mirror in the Museum of
the Louvre_ may still be consulted with profit, though it dates back to
the beginning of my career.

As for the exhaustive studies which I subsequently devoted to one of
the bronze weights found in 1851 in the excavations at the Serapeium, it
would be ungracious for me not to think well of them, as they opened for
me the doors of the Institute.

Encouraged by the flattering reception with which my researches of this
nature were received by many of my new colleagues, I was tempted for a
moment to treat in one comprehensive work of the weights