The Aspirations of Jean Servien

tion with the music of chants and organ, drowned in the scent of incense and flowers, hung about with scapularies, rosaries, consec

uxury of the rich and the pomps of the Church service. She had more than once been overheard informing one of the cronies she used to meet on the boulevards that she was a religious woman, but she could not abide priests, that she said her prayers at home, and thes

in one of their little books of devotion. Now it was a phantom monk who had stepped out of the grave, showing the stigmata on hands and feet and the pierced side; now a nun, beautiful as the veiled figures in the Church pictures, expiating in the fires of hell mysterious sins. Jean had his favourite tale. Shuddering, he would relate how St. Francis Borgia, after the death of Queen Isabella, who was lovely beyond co

, who attended the ceremony with his

nbridled charger that plunges over precipices. The simile struck his fancy, and he would quote it years after

be just the same as ever and already disillusioned. He