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remarkably well suited to the convenience of preachers; no echo whatever, and hardly any reverberation. A row of arches forms a semicircle behind the chancel, and separates the aisles from the nave, while sustaining the gallery. There, invisible behind an upper row of smaller arches, the novices pray and chant during the evening Benediction. Above and behind the high altar, within a niche as large as two or three of the gallery arches, stands a great white statue of Marie-Immaculée, with a crown of star-shaped gaslights over her head. This, when the gas is turned on for some grand festival, the aisles being illuminated with many coloured lamps, and the sanctuary all ablaze with pyramids of tapers, presents an appearance which is strikingly picturesque.

On entering the Residence we notice a peculiar air of calm—call it monastic gloom if you are worldly-minded—that pervades the whole place. All is silent. The sun shines dimly through ground-glass windows and Venetian blinds at the end of a long stone-paved corridor down-stairs. No one is there but one or two priests, walking to and fro noiselessly like shadows, saying their Breviary. First and second floor: corridors ditto, shadows ditto; more of the Venetian blinds and less of the sunlight. All the novices occupy the third storey; the Pères de Résidence alone live below. They are old or middle-aged for the most part; authors, confessors, preachers getting their Lent, Advent, and Mission sermons ready, and aged men "preparing themselves for death," as the Status (or annual register) used to put it, I am told: Pater X., parat se ad mortem. Nowadays, however, they would prefer to write simply senex after the name; but parat se ad mortem is an occupation. and senex is not. As everything in the chapel bore witness to opulence and taste, so everything in the Residence testifies to cleanliness and affluence. The tokens of affluence, however, stop short at the threshold of the Fathers’ rooms; those of cleanliness go further. You will find in their cells—large indeed and airy enough—only a few almost indispensable objects: A writing-desk, a lamp, a small bronze crucifix, a prie-Dieu, two, or sometimes even three rush-bottomed chairs, a curtained bedstead in a recess, a broom peeping out from a corner, and a wash-hand stand; no carpets, flowers, mirrors, pictures, or curtains, No luxuries, in a word. All that is not strictly necessary is strictly prohibited.

But we are visiting the Novitiate, not the Residence. Let us accordingly go up-stairs to the third floor, a few minutes to four a.m. All is dark in the passage. A light is suddenly struck. The bell must ring at four precisely, as the novices, like the rest of the Society, have seven hours of sleep allotted to them; and the Frère Réglementaire is getting up betimes in order to begin his day’s work. This is no sinecure; for I have reckoned that he rings the bell thirty-five times in seventeen hours. It sounds—and at the first "ding-dong" a series of jumps on to the floor is heard in reply. For the bell is the voice of God, as Ignatius says; and as no novice would have thought of rising without one instant before, so no one would, even for a second, hesitate to obey the divine call. The Frére goes down the passage with a lighted queue-de-rat his hand, and successively lights one lamp in each room, saying