to hit throughout the ages;
try to struggle through the scarcely perceptible opening which leads
to another firmament. Thou hast the infinity of time and space to try
the experiment. He who can commit blunders with impunity is always
certain to succeed.

Happy they who shall have had a part in this great final triumph which
will be the complete advent of God! A Paradise lost is always, for him
who wills it so, a Paradise regained. Often as Adam must have mourned
the loss of Eden, I fancy that if he lived, as we are told, 930 years
after his fall, he must often have exclaimed: _Felix culpa!_ Truth is,
whatever may be said to the contrary, superior to all fictions. One
ought never to regret seeing clearer into the depths. By endeavouring
to increase the treasure of the truths which form the paid-up capital
of humanity, we shall be carrying on the work of our pious ancestors,
who loved the good and the true as it was understood in their time.
The most fatal error is to believe that one serves one's country by
calumniating those who founded it. All ages of a nation are leaves of
the self-same book. The true men of progress are those who profess as
their starting-point a profound respect for the past. All that we do,
all that we are, is the outcome of ages of labour. For my own part,
I never feel my liberal faith more firmly rooted in me than when I
ponder over the miracles of the ancient creed, nor more ardent for the
work of the future than when I have been listening for hours to the
bells of the city of Is.

[Footnote 1: Upon the very day that this volume was going to press,
news reached me of the death of my brother, snapping the last thread
of the recollections of my childhood's home. My brother Alain was
a warm and true friend to me; he never failed to understand me,
to approve my course of action and to love me. His clear and sound
intellect and his great capacity for work adapted him for a profession
in which mathematical knowledge is of value or for magisterial
functions. The misfortunes of our family caused him to follow a
different career, and he underwent many hardships with unshaken
courage. He never complained of his lot, though life had scant
enjoyment save that which is derived from love of home. These joys
are, however, unquestionably the most unalloyed.]

THE FLAX-CRUSHER.

PART I.

Treguier, my native place, has grown into a town out of an ancient
monastery founded at the close of the fifth