ing _Introibo ad altare Dei_ with
no one to respond: _Ad Deum qui loetificat juventutem meam_. There is
no one to serve my mass for me. In default of any one else I respond
for myself, but it is not the same thing.

Thus everything seemed to make for my having a modest ecclesiastical
career in Brittany. I should have made a very good priest, indulgent,
fatherly, charitable, and of blameless morals. I should have been as
a priest what I am as a father, very much loved by my flock, and as
easy-going as possible in the exercise of my authority. What are now
defects would have been good qualities. Some of the errors which
I profess would have been just the thing for a man who identifies
himself with the spirit of his calling. I should have got rid of some
excrescences which, being only a layman, I have not taken the trouble
to remove, easy as it would have been for me to do so. My career would
have been as follows: at two-and-twenty professor at the College of
Treguier, and at about fifty canon, or perhaps grand vicar at St.
Brieuc, very conscientious, very generally respected, a kind-hearted
and gentle confessor. Little inclined to new dogmas, I should have
been bold enough to say with many good ecclesiastics after the Vatican
Council: _Posui custodiam ori meo._ My antipathy for the Jesuits
would have shown itself by never alluding to them, and a fund of mild
Gallicanism would have been veiled beneath the semblance of a profound
knowledge of canon law.

An extraneous incident altered the whole current of my life. From the
most obscure of little towns in the most remote of provinces I
was thrust without preparation into the vortex of all that is most
sprightly and alert in Parisian society. The world stood revealed to
me, and my self became a double one. The Gascon got the better of the
Breton; there was no more _custodia oris mei_, and I put aside the
padlock which I should otherwise have set upon my mouth. In so far as
regards my inner self I remained the same. But what a change in the
outward show! Hitherto I had lived in a hypogeum, lighted by smoky
lamps; now I was going to see the sun and the light of day.

THE PETTY SEMINARY OF SAINT NICHOLAS DU CHARDONNET.

PART II.

About the month of April, 1838, M. de Talleyrand, feeling his end draw
near, thought it necessary to act a last lie in accordance with human
prejudices, and he resolved to be reconciled, in appearance, to
a Church whose truth, once acknowl