vere their
august spirits; he gave up the use of the planchette, rejected the
teachings of Confucius, and, in short, became a convert to Christianity.
This might be considered either as a gratifying testimony to the
persuasive powers of Catholic missionaries, or as an example of the wiles
of Jesuitism, if we did not know the inner history of Mr. Ling's soul,
the abysmal depths of his personality. He has not, like many other
modern converts, written a little book, such as "How I ceased to chinchin
Joss; or, from Confucius to Christianity," but he has told Madame Judith
Mendes all about it. Madame Mendes has made a name in literature, and
English readers may have wondered how the daughter of the poet Theophile
Gautier came to acquire the knowledge of Chinese which she has shown in
her translations from that language. It now appears that she was the
pupil of Tin-tun-ling, who, in a moment of expansion, confided to her
that he adopted the Catholic faith that he might eat a morsel of bread.
He was starving, it seems; he had eaten nothing for eight days, when he
threw himself on the charity of the missionaries, and received baptism.
Since Winckelmann turned renegade, and became a Roman Catholic merely
that the expenses of his tour to Rome and his maintenance there might be
paid, there have surely been few more mercenary converts. Tin-tun-ling
was not satisfied with being christened into the Church, he was also
married in Catholic rites, and here his misfortunes fairly began, and he
entered on the path which has led him into difficulty and discredit.

The French, as a nation, are not remarkable for their accuracy in the use
of foreign proper names, and we have a difficulty in believing that the
name of Mr. Ling's first wife was really Quzia-Tom-Alacer. There is a
touch of M. Hugo's famous Tom Jim Jack, the British tar, about this
designation. Nevertheless, the facts are that Tin-tun-ling was wedded to
Quzia, and had four children by her. After years of domestic life, on
which he is said to look back but rarely and with reluctance, he got a
position as secretary and shoeblack and tutor in Chinese to a M. Callery,
and left the province of Chin-li for Paris. For three months this
devoted man sent Quzia-Tom-Alacer small sums of money, and after that his
kindness became, as Douglas Jerrold said, unremitting. Quzia heard of
her lord no more till she learned that he had forgotten his marriage vow,
and was, in fact, Another's.