the strong, loving heart plead for that poor soul in those long watches! with what a passion of charity did she wrestle, as it were, in prayer with God, refusing to "let Him go" till He blessed her with the gift of her sister's salvation. And the gift was granted. On the sixth night the poor withered hand sought hers, and there was a faint whisper: "Oh, how good you are!" "Do you know me, then?" "I knew you all the time, but I could not speak before." "Thank God!" "You believe in God?-but of course you do, because you are good. I believed in Him too till I was driven to be wicked." "Who drove you to be wicked?" "Oh, it is too long a story, and if I told it you would leave me, and I dare not die alone. If you went away, the phantoms would come back." "What phantoms?" "The people I have tracked to death-there are more than twenty of them." Sœur Théoctiste repressed all sign of the shuddering horror she felt, and calmly asked, "What harm had they done you?" "One of them had been the death of my grandchildren, and as to the rest— ma foi!-they were all of the noblesse, like the villain who sent Jean to the galleys, and killed my little Marguerite with grief." "But you must have been mad," said the Sister, "to wreak your vengeance on persons who had never wronged you." "No, I was not mad; I wanted them to suffer because I had suffered so horribly."

And in spite of all Théoctiste could say, Jeanne Michaud, that was her name, persisted in considering this a justification of her crimes. Still the servant of God and His poor hoped on; this woman had loved her grandchildren intensely; there was, at least there had been, tenderness in that seared heart; besides, would God have given this return of reason for nothing? So, by degrees, she drew her story from her. Jeanne had been in easy circumstances, living with her three orphan grand-children on a little farm near Caen, which the eldest of them managed. This young man was a keen sportsman, and, in spite of his grandmother's prohibitions, was given to

poaching in the woods of the Comte de Civray, their landlord. One fatal day they met; the Comte struck Jean across the face with his cane, and the unhappy young man, mad with passion, shot at him, and wounded him slightly. He was condemned to death, a sentence commuted, by the bishops intercession, into work at the galleys for life. The term proved short enough; Jean died within the year, and his young sister, whose marriage with a neighbour's son had been broken off since her brother's disgrace, pined away, and was laid in her grave about the same time. The desire of vengeance was kindled in Jeanne's heart, but she kept silence, and bided her time. All too soon it came; the Revolution broke out, and now that the nobles were hunted like wild beasts, she would track her enemy to death. Etienne, her surviving grandchild, was fighting with the army on the frontier, there was no one to hinder her revenge. The Comte de Civray, denounced by Jeanne, perished on the scaffold, with his young wife and aged father, and as he mounted the steps she shook her clenched hand in his face, shrieking out: "Remember Jean Michaud!" This was at Caen; but having once tasted blood, she thirsted for more, and moving to Paris, she obtained an interview with Saint-Just, offering herself as "purveyor" of victims for the guillotine. She had a large sum of money, but the tyrant advised her to feign poverty, and to live a little way out of the city, which she was to visit daily, in order to watch the houses likely to harbour suspects. The horror with which Soeur Théoctiste heard this fearful story was deepened by the words with which she concluded, saying that after a time her moving impulse was not hatred, but habit, and that she was never happy except at the foot of the scaffold. After the fall of Robespierre she fell into a state of profound despair, often passing whole days without food for fear of the children hooting her; “and so,” she said, "I must have gone crazy at last. What else can explain those dreadful phantoms which were always about

me?" "No," answered the Sister, "it was not madness, but remorse; thank God for it!" "Perhaps you are right. I ought to have been satisfied with the death of my enemies, and not to have brought any more to the scaffold." Then Théoctiste told her that the root of all her sin had been the indulgence of thoughts of vengeance against M. de Civray. She said that her intelligence, and the good education she had received, made her far more guilty than an ignorant person who knew nothing of the religion of the Gospel. She asked her if He Who died forgiving His murderers had not a good right to bid us pardon the greatest injuries done to ourselves; if His Mother, who forgave, and pitied, and loved the men who crucified her Son, might not well plead with her to forgive the man at whose door she laid the death of her children. She reminded her that very soon her Judge would require at her hands the blood of her brothers, and then, falling on her knees, she implored her with tears to repay the care for which she had expressed so much gratitude a hundredfold, by turning to her God, by forgiving as she hoped to be forgiven. She was still pleading with the Divine eloquence taught by the love of souls, when the door opened, and a young officer knelt by the dying woman, and joined his prayers to those of the Sister of Charity. It was her grandson Etienne, who had been sent with a letter to the Convention from General Davoust, and having learnt his grandmother's address in Paris, had come in haste to Auteuil. The voice of the child of her love, unheard for so long, completed the victory of grace. The good Abbé was soon beside Jeanne Michaud, who had eagerly begged to see a priest, if one could be found, and while he was alone with his penitent, Sœur Théoctiste and the young soldier waited in the next room. It was evident that Etienne was entirely ignorant of the terrible story of his grandmother, and that her denunciation of M. de Civray was the only crime he knew her to be guilty of. Sœur Théoctiste charged the good old people of the house

to keep the secret, but it was impossible to check the recital of her devotion to the old terroriste, and Etienne Michaud was thanking her for the hundredth time when M. de Germond called them both to the death-bed of the humble Christian who had been "La Mère Féroce." The Divine absolution still seemed to rest on the forehead, from which all ferocity had for ever departed, and after blessing Etienne, and looking with speechless gratitude at the Abbé, Théoctiste, and her good host and hostess, she breathed out her soul while pressing a last kiss on the Crucifix. Sœur Théoctiste's tender charity did not end with Jeanne Michaud's life; she busied herself in the interests of her good name by persuading the people of Auteuil to excuse her evil deeds on the ground of her madness. "Surely," she said, "it was no falsehood; is not such vengeance the worst madness?"

Imprisonment and Liberation of Mgr. Bidel,
Uicar Apostolic of Corea.

IT is right to keep in mind the cruel persecutions which from the year 1839 the Church has had to endure in the great and populous peninsula of Corea, and also the zeal and energy with which the missionaries, headed by the Apostolic Vicar, Mgr. Bidel, devoted themselves to the assistance of the poor Christians in their need, and laboured to obtain a firm footing in the country.

After various disappointments, Mgr. Bidel succeeded at last in entering his vicariate with four intrepid missionaries. Their arrival was no sooner made known to the Christians, than they flocked so eagerly to the sacraments that a new and most promising prospect seemed before the Church in Corea. In outward circumstances, however, all was the same; there were the same dangers, the same laws, and the same hatred of Christianity in those who surrounded them. "We are entirely in the hands of God," wrote Mgr. Bidel soon after his arrival, "dangers encircle us; from men we have neither help nor protection, and we are always in expectation of imprisonment, and of the outbreak of persecution."

Soon indeed were his words verified. In January, 1878, some messengers of the Vicar Apostolic were seized on the Chinese borders. From the letters they carried the Government of Corea was made aware of the presence in their country of a bishop and four priests. This gave occasion to Mgr. Bidel's imprisonment. Contrary to all expectation, and in fact through the mediation of the Chinese Government, he was not sentenced to death, but only sent beyond the boundaries. From China, where