ave it to the Company of St. Sulpice
as a branch for the Paris house. The little pavilion of Queen
Marguerite was not in any way changed, except that the paintings
on the walls were slightly modified. The Venuses were changed into
Virgins, and the Cupids into angels, while the emblematic paintings
with Spanish mottoes in the interstices were left untouched, as they
did not shock the proprieties. A very fine room, the walls of which
were covered with paintings of a secular character, was whitewashed
about half a century ago, but they would perhaps be found uninjured if
this was washed off. The park to which Bouteroue refers in his poem
is unchanged; except that several statues of holy persons have been
placed in it. An arbour with an inscription and two busts marks the
spot where Bossuet and Fenelon, M. Tronson and M. de Noailles had
long conferences upon the subject of Quietism, and agreed upon the
thirty-four articles of the spiritual life, styled the Issy Articles.

Further on, at the end of an avenue of high trees, near the little
cemetery of the Company, is a reproduction of the inside of the Santa
Casa of Loretta, which is a favourite spot with the residents in the
seminary, and which is decorated with the emblematic paintings of
which they are so fond. I can still see the mystical rose, the tower
of ivory, and the gate of gold, before which I have passed many a long
morning in a state betwixt sleep and waking. _Hortus conclusus, fons
signatus_, very plainly represented by means of what may be
described as mural miniatures, excited my curiosity very much, but my
imagination was too chaste to carry my thoughts beyond the limits
of pious wonder. I am afraid that this beautiful park has been sadly
injured by the war and the Communist insurrection of 1870--71. It was
for me, after the cathedral of Treguier, the first cradle of thought.
I used to pass whole hours under the shade of its trees, seated on a
stone bench with a book in my hand. It was there that I acquired
not only a good deal of rheumatism, but a great liking for our damp
autumnal nature in the north of France. If, later in life, I have been
charmed by Mount Hermon, and the sunheated slopes of the Anti-Lebanon,
it is due to the polarisation which is the law of love and which leads
us to seek out our opposites. My first ideal is a cool Jansenist bower
of the seventeenth century, in October, with the keen impression of
the air and the searching odour of the d