“Te Deum laudamus!”

In the midst of this cathedral, black with kneeling men and women, the chant burst forth like a light which gleams suddenly in the night, and the silence was broken as by a peal of thunder.  The voices rose with the clouds of incense which threw diaphanous, bluish veils over the quaint marvels of the architecture.  All was richness, perfume, light and melody.

At the moment at which this symphony of love and gratitude rolled toward the altar, Don Juan, too polite not to express his thanks and too witty not to appreciate a jest, responded by a frightful laugh, and straightened up in his reliquary.  But, the devil having given him a hint of the danger he ran of being taken for an ordinary man, for a saint, a Boniface or a Pantaleon, he interrupted this harmony of love by a shriek in which the thousand voices of hell joined.  Earth lauded, heaven condemned.  The church trembled on its ancient foundations.

“Te Deum laudamus!” sang the crowd.

“Go to the devil, brute beasts that you are!  ‘Carajos demonios!’ Beasts! what idiots you are with your God!”

And a torrent of curses rolled forth like a stream of burning lava at an eruption of Vesuvius.

“’Deus sabaoth! sabaoth’!” cried the Christians.

Then the living arm was thrust out of the reliquary and waved threateningly over the assembly with a gesture full of despair and irony.

“The saint is blessing us!” said the credulous old women, the children and the young maids.

It is thus that we are often deceived in our adorations.  The superior man mocks those who compliment him, and compliments those whom he mocks in the depths of his heart.

When the Abbot, bowing low before the altar, chanted:  “’Sancte Johannes, ora pro nobis’!” he heard distinctly:  “’O coglione’!”

“What is happening up there?” cried the superior, seeing the reliquary move.

“The saint is playing devil!” replied the Abbot.

At this the living head tore itself violently away from the dead body and fell upon the yellow pate of the priest.

“Remember, Dona Elvira!” cried the head, fastening its teeth in the head of the Abbot.

The latter gave a terrible shriek, which threw the crowd into a panic.  The priests rushed to the assistance of their chief.

“Imbecile!  Now say that there is a God!” cried the voice, just as the Abbot expired.

THE AGE FOR LOVE

BY PAUL BOURGET

When I submitted the plan of my Inquiry Upon the Age for Love to the editor-in-chief of the Boulevard, the highest type of French literary paper, he seemed astonished that an idea so journalistic—­that was his word—­should have been evolved from the brain of his most recent acquisition.  I had been with him two weeks and it was my first contribution.  “Give me some details, my dear Labarthe,” he said, in a somewhat less insolent manner than was his wont.  After listening to me for a few moments he continued:  “That is good.  You will go and interview certain men and women, first upon the age at which one loves the most, next upon the age when one is most loved?  Is that your idea?  And now to whom will you go first?”