himself, with the rudeness of a monk contemptuous of women. The chapel was empty. He darted out of the confessional, and with a terrible voice, a magnificent tragic movement of his great sleeves, exclaimed: 'Madame de Maucroix ! Understand! I forbid you to intrude into my life as a priest and interfere in matters which concern Heaven and myself alone.' And he quitted the chapel with

majestic step.

"Madame de Maucroix sank upon the pavement. Next day, broken down with grief and quite prepared to humiliate herself, she returned to the convent. The porter informed her that Father Montarcy was absent. The Prior, whom she asked to see, announced in freezing tones that he was departed for the Tyrol, where he purposed to spend some months in a convent recently founded. She understood that all was over. She possessed in Sologne a little old country-house, and thither she took refuge. There she lived for a year amid the melancholy of the pinewoods, of the violet heaths and motionless meres stained with blood at sunset, passing her days in the practice of a minute and mechanical devotion, sleepily plucking the beads of her rosary, chilled, without thoughts, with tearless eyes. In truth, she was dying day by day of an affection of the liver, aggravated suddenly by her recent emotions. When she saw that her end was near, she begged the sister who nursed her to write to Father Montarcy that she was going to die. Actually she died next day, and the Father's answer came too late. It was wanting in simplicity, though perhaps not in sincerity: My mother! my mother! all is forgotten. Ah! often have I wept in the presence of Heaven,' &c., &c. It was signed, 'Your son.'

66

The good sister, who received the letter, thought she might open it, and felt somewhat surprised and scandalised."

The peculiar sense of irony which is the closing effect of every one of these shorter pieces is also the prevailing note of Serenus-that more lengthy and weighty narrative, which gives name to the whole volume. It embodies the imaginary confession of a supposed Christian martyr, who was not in reality a Christian at all, who had in truth died by his own hand.

At daybreak, on a morning of March, A.D. 90, a group of Christians has come to the Mamertine prison to receive the bodies of certain criminals condemned to death.

"It was cold: small rain was falling: towards the east the sky was tinged with an impure and ghastly yellow. The Eternal City, emerging from the shadows of night, unrolled

around the Capitol its gray billows of houses, like a dirty sea after a storm. Certain ponderous monuments rose above the rest here and there. Their wet roofs shone feebly in the dawn."

"Let us pray for our brothers! says an aged priest in the company; and at that moment the magistrates entrusted with the execution of capital sentences emerge from the prison. The Christians enter. The head and trunk of the grey-haired consular, Flavius Clemens, are lying there. A patch of blood glistens on the ground beside him. One of the Christians dips in it the corner of a white linen cloth, which he folds carefully and hides within his tunic. In the next cell lay the corpse of a man still young. He seemed to have died a natural death. Even in death his fine but enigmatic features wore an air of irony and pride. "The body of Marcus Annæus Serenus!" cries the gaoler. "He was found dead this morning. The triumvirs thought it not worth while to decapitate a dead body. It is thought he died of poison." The rude face of the aged priest contracted suddenly with a look surprise, of pain and indignation.

of

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Through the midst of the temptuous bystanders the bodies are reverently borne away along the Appian Way, well described by M. Lemaitre, to a vast subterranean chamber, the tomb of Flavius Clemens, where the priest Timotheus remains alone for

a time with the sacred remains. As he gazes on the face of Serenus with a look "keen and persistent, as if he would have fathomed to its depths the mysterious soul which dwelt no longer in that elegant form," his hand rests for a moment on the bosom of

the corpse. He feels something below the silken tunic-a roll of parchment. He recognises the handwriting of Serenus. But the characters are small and fine, impossible to read in that feeble light. Hardly pausing to cover the pale face, he hastens from the sepulchre, and returns with the manuscript to his sordid lodging in Rome. Here he

draws forth and reads with eagerness the confessions of Serenus.

"It is folly perhaps to undertake this confession. Either it will not be read, or it will distress those who read it. Still, it may be, that in recounting my story to myself for the last time, I shall justify myself in my own eyes. Some worthy souls have loved me, but none have really known me. Now, though for a long time past it has been my pride to live in myself, to be impenetrable to every one beside, my secret weighs upon me to-day. A certain regret comes to me (it is almost remorse) that I have played so successfully the singular part which circumstances and my own curiosity have imposed upon me; and I should wish, by way of persuading myself that I could not have acted otherwise, to take up the entire chain of my thoughts and actions from my earliest days to the day on which I am to die."

It is a charming figure, certainly, which Serenus displays, rich with intellectual endowments, and a heart that, amid all the opportunities for corruption which could beset a fortunate patrician in the days of Domitian, never loses its purity to the last affectionate, reflective, impressible by pity, with "the gift of tears." And here is one of his earliest experiences.

"I was twelve years old when the great fire destroyed one-half of Rome and threw more than a hundred thousand people on the pavements. During two or three years, in spite of the enormous distributions of money and bread ordered by the emperor, the misery in Rome was fearful. The spectacle of so much undeserved suffering wounded my heart incurably. I conceived a lively notion of the injustice of things and the absurdity of men's destinies. I found it unjust that my father should be the possessor of five hundred slaves while so many poor people were dying of hunger. I gave away all the money I could dispose of. But, with the stiff logic of my age, I considered that no thanks were due to me, and avoided people's effusive thanks, the coarseness of which shocked the fine taste of my aristocratic youth. One day my tutor took me to a grand festival which Nero gave to the people in his gardens. To divert the anger of the populace, which accused him of being the author of the conflagration, he had caused some hundreds of Christians to be arrested. The majority of them had been thrown to the beasts in the circus: others, arrayed in sacks steeped in resin, were attached to tall stakes at intervals along the broad pathways. At nightfall fire was applied to them. The crowds pressed with loud vociferations around the living torches. The flame which enveloped the culprits, hol

lowed by the wind from time to time, allowed the horrible faces to be seen, with great open mouths, though one could not hear the cries. A stench of burnt flesh filled the air. I had a nervous attack and was carried home half dead. The shock had been too great; and although at that age the most painful impressions are quickly effaced, something of it remained with me-a languor of spirit at certain moments, a melancholy, an indolence of pulse, rare in a child."

This was on one side: on the other were the varied intellectual interests offered to a reflective mind in that curious, highly educated, wistful age. In a few effective but sparing traits Serenus depicts his intellectual course, through the noble dreams of a chaste Stoicism, through the exquisite material voluptuousness of Epicureanism when the natural reaction had come, until, having exhausted experience, as he fancies, he proposes to die.

It was an age in which people had carried the art of enjoyment to its height.

"Never before, I think, has the world seen, never again will it see, so small a number of persons absorb and occupy for their own uses so large a number of human lives. Some of my friends had as many as three thousand slaves, and hardly knew the real extent of their riches. And the science of pleasure was on a level with the resources at its disposition. Many successive generations of a privileged class had made a study of the means of refining, varying, multiplying, agreeable sensations. Posterity, assuredly, will hardly conceive the kind of life which some of us have known and practised. But as the future will not easily imagine the intensity of our physical pleasures, perhaps it will even less understand the depth of our satiety. It will be surprised, in reading our chronicles, at the number of those who in this age have committed suicide. After fifteen years of a revel, refined and coarse by turns, my body exhausted, my senses dulled, my heart void to the bottom of all belief, and even of illusion, what was I to do in the world? It figured to me as a ridiculous spectacle, and interested me no longer. I had retained that native sweetness of temper which came to me from my father, but only because I found it pleasant to be kind; and even that too was come to be indifferent to me. For the rest, public employments had become sordid things of purchase, and I loathed every form of activity. I languished in an immense, an incurable ennui, and having no further motive to live, I wished to die. Death had no fears for me. It was the great deliverer. Only, I desired to die without suffering."

The would-be suicide is saved from death by the intervention, at the last moment, of his sister, the youthful Serena, in the retired life of a young orphan girl scarcely known by him. hitherto; and her subsequent devotion during the long illness which follows touches him deeply. In reality her devotion is due in part to a motive higher than natural sisterly devotion. On the part of Serenus also, there was something deeper than merely fraternal affection.

"It was love of a peculiar kind, such as I had never before experienced in the faintest degree. Serena was so different from all the women I had ever known. It seemed to me that that love evoked from the depths of my past life and brought to new birth within me what had been lost in my earlier days, those ardours of the youthful sage aspiring towards an absolute purity. Then, in proportion as I recovered my mental vigour, my old curiosity returned; and little by little I introduced into this ardent affection for my sister, the attentive mood of an observer, attracted by the spectacle of an extraordinary soul.

"One day Serena said to me, 'Will you give me a great pleasure? Come with me to-morrow morning where I shall take you.'

"I will go where you will, Serena.'

Serena takes him to see the ceremonies of the Eucharist in a Christian oratory.

"I perceived among the company assembled the consul of that year, Flavius Clemens-a circumstance which explained the fact that this meeting took place in one of the burial places of his family. I recognised the wife of Clemens and his niece, and Paulina, the widow of Seneca, pale for ever from having followed her husband more than half way on the road to death. They were deeply veiled. At last I saw in the front rank Acte, the former mistress of Nero, the former friend of my father, still beautiful in spite of her fifty years, but with a little of the cosmetic art, methinks. The rest of the company appeared to be composed of poor people and slaves."

To Serenus the company, the office for which it was assembled, seemed grave, majestic, touching, and something altogether new. But he perceives also, clearly enough, once for all, that for him these rites will never be more than a spectacle, that there is a gulf between these people and himself.

"My dear Serenus,' said my sister, as we departed, You have now seen what the Christians are. You will love them more and more in proportion as you come to know them. You are unhappy, as I well know. You must become a Christian. The Truth is there. There, also, is the secret of consolation.'

"I will think of it, Serena.'

In fact, he takes pains to inform himself on the matter, interested at finding many a familiar thought of ancient pagan wisdom in a new setting.

Yes!

"All the virtues which the pagan philosophers had already known and preached seemed to me among the disciples of Christ to have been transformed by a sentiment absolutely new-a love of a God who was man, a God crucified-a love burning, full of sensibility, of tears, of confidence, of hope. Clearly, neither the personification of the forces of nature, nor the abstract deity of the Stoics, had ever inspired anything like this. And this love of God, the origin of, and first step towards, all other Christian virtues, communicated to them a purity and sweetness, an unction, and, as it were, a perfume, such as I had never breathed before."

Yet with all his heartfelt admiration for believers, Serenus is still unable to believe. Like a creature of the nineteenth century, he finds the world absolutely subject to the reign of physical law. And then there were difficulties of another sort, of which he became sensible now and again.

"The idea which my new brethren entertained of the world about us, and of our life here, jarred upon I know not what sentiment of nature within me. In spite of my own persistent pessimism, I was displeased that men should so despise the only mode of life, after all, of which we are certain. I found them, moreover, far too simple-minded, closed against all artistic impressions, limited, inelegant. Or, perhaps, a certain anxiety awaking in me, I feared for the mischief which might be caused to the empire by a conception of life such as that, if it continued to spreada detachment such as theirs from all civil duties, all profane occupations. Sometimes I was decidedly unjust to them. The religious after-thought which the Christians mingled with their affections, by way of purifying them, seemed to me to chill those affections, in depriving them of their natural liberty, their grace, their spontaneity. To be loved only as redeemed by Christ, and in regard of my eternal salvation. made my heart cold. And

then it shocked me that these saintly people should feel so sure of so many things, and things so wonderful, while I, for my part, had searched so carefully without finding, had doubted so much in my life, and finally made a pride of my unbelief."

But, inconsistently enough, he is offended at times by the survival of many a human weakness among the believers. The consul Clemens, among those brothers who were all equal before Heaven, was treated with marked consideration, and welcomed it. Slaves were still slaves. The woman were rivals for the special attention of the priests. Acte, once the mistress of Nero, somewhat exaggerated her piety, and still retained also many of her former artificial manners.

"In spite of those little weaknesses, what good, what beautiful souls, I came across there! In vain I said to myself, these holy persons are making a bargain; they reckon on Paradise; it is in view of a reward that they practise the most sublime virtues. But to believe at all

in that distant far-off recompense, is not this too itself an act of virtue, since it involves belief in the justice of God, and a conception of Him, as being that which He ought to be?"

And noting sometimes the ardent quality of their faith and its appropriateness to human needs, the needs especially of the poor and suffering, Serenus could not but feel that the future would be with them. If the empire failed, the religion of Christ would flourish on its ruins. Then, what sort of a thing would that new humanity be? More virtuous, doubtless, and therefore happier, since happiness comes of the soul; on the other hand, he thinks (mistakenly, as we know, looking backwards on the length and breadth of Christian history) with less art, and less elegance of soul, a feebler understanding of the beautiful.

Presently, a certain change takes place in the life of the Christian community. The influence of Calixtus, a priest of the sweeter and more lenient type, is superseded by that of Timotheus, lately returned to Rome—a man sincerely good, but narrow-minded and

rigorous in his zeal.

He would have

Serenus receive baptism, or depart entirely from the church. It takes Serenus some time to explain away his scruples regarding what seems at first sight an act of hypocrisy. And then the trial comes. Partly on the ground of their religious belief, mainly for an affront to the Emperor, the chief members of the community are arrested. Serenus has said adieu to his sister. He is in prison, awaiting his end.

"My gaoler is a good-natured fellow. I had about me the means of writing, and he has procured me a lamp. He informs me that the executioner will come about the hour of daybreak. I have been writing all the night. My last link to life is broken; and death, be it annihilation, be it the passage to a world unknown, has no terrors for me. I have replaced myself almost exactly in the state of mind in which I was last year, when I determined to die in my bath. But at this last moment a dread has come upon me for a death which soils and disfigures: I fear the stroke of the axe, which may fail in its aim. In my time the science of poisons has reached a high perfection, and the hollow pearl in my ring contains a colourless drop of liquid which will destroy me in a few minutes, almost without pain. I have seen the honours Christians pay to the burial-place wherein rest the remains of the victims of Nero. They will honour me also as one of their saints. Can I, at this late hour, undeceive them? But for what purpose? I am willing they should guess the fact of my suicide, that they should read my confession; yet I will do nothing to that end; for if Serena knew how I died, in what condition of unbelief, her grief would be too great for her. For the rest, I have good hope that Timotheus, who has no love for me, will allow only a limited form of reverence to be paid to my bones; and if some simple hearts revere me more than I deserve, again what does it matter? It is their faith will be reckoned to them, not the merits of the saint they will invoke. And then, after all, it is not a bad man whose memory they will honour. I have sincerely sought for truth. I forced myself in youth to attain to sanctity as I conceived it. And if I have been indolent, weak, voluptuous -if I have dore little for other people-at least I have always had great indulgence for them, a great pity."

The austere Timotheus, full of suspicion, pored for hours over the manuscript, which was clear enough at the beginning. But the scholarly Latin of the young patrician was not

always intelligible to him, towards the end the handwriting became confused, and he remained still in doubt regarding the precise character of the death of Serenus. He might have confided the confession to a more expert reader; but, though profoundly curious on the matter, he feared a possible scandal. More than suspicious, he would fain allow Serenus the benefit of such doubt as remained. If he had not died for Christ, at least he had been condemned because of Him; and, perhaps, even at the last moment, some sudden illumination, some gleam of faith had come to him. For a moment he thought of burning the manuscript; but a certain sense of respect for the dead restrained him. He replaced the manuscript in a fold of the tunic: "Let his sin, or his innocence, remain with him. God! who judgest the heart, I recommend my brother to your goodness!"

It is about eight hundred years later that we find Serenus again-Marcus Annæus Serenus, by the designation of his tombstone in the catacombs,-as Saint Marc le Romain, at Beaugencysur-Loire, whither his precious relics have been brought from Rome by the Abbot Angelran. Among those relics the Abbot had discovered the manuscript, and confided it, still intact, to the most learned member of the Benedictine community over which he presided. With him those old doubts of Timotheus became certainty. With much labour he deciphers the writing, and discovers that the supposed martyr had died a pagan.

But Saint Marc the Roman had already become popular, and worked miracles. The learned monk was unwilling to trouble the minds of the faithful, to gratify, moreover, the monks of a rival house. Still, he lacked the courage to destroy a document so singular, and hid the manuscript in a corner of the monastic library. It

passed we are told, in 1793, into the public library of Beaugency, where it was found and read by our author. The reputation of Saint Marc the Roman maintained itself till far onwards in the Middle Ages. His miracles, like himself of old, were always considerate, always full of "indulgence."

The same sort of irony, then, makes itself felt, as the final impression of the history of Serenus--the same sort of irony as that which shaped the fortunes of M. Lemaitre's other characters-the worthiest of all the sisters, who fails to get married: the mother who embraces the wrong infant Boun, with her gift of the fairy's ring, whose last, best miracle of assistance is but to restore her again to the simplicity of mind and body in which it had found her. "She has this irony Dame Nature!"-and in the recognition of it, supplemented by a keen sense of what should be the complementary disposition on man's part, is the nearest approach which our author makes to a philosophy of life. Nature, circumstance, is far from pitiful, abounds in mockeries, in baffling surprises and misadventures, like a cynical person amused with the distresses of children. Over against that cynical humour, it may be our part to promote in life the mood of the kindly person, still regarding people very much as children, but, like Serenus, with "a great pity for them, a great indulgence."

M. Lemaitre has many and varied interests, a marked individuality of his own amid them all, and great literary accomplishments. His success in the present volume might well encourage him to undertake a work of larger scope, to add to his other excellent gifts, in the prolonged treatment of some one of those many interests, that great literary gift of patience.