department.  There, under beautiful glass cases, sparkled all the glittering display and showy luxury of the Church, golden tabernacles where the Paschal Lamb reposed in a flaming triangle, censers with quadruple chains, stoles and chasubles, heavy with embroidery, enormous candelabra, ostensories and drinking-cups incrusted with enamel and false precious stones-before all these splendors the child, who had read the Arabian Nights, believed that he had entered Aladdin’s cave, or Aboul-Cassem’s pit.  From this glittering array one passed, without transition, into the sombre depot of ecclesiastical vestments.  Here all was black.  One saw only piles of cassocks and pyramids of black hats.  Two manikins, one clothed in a cardinal’s purple robe, the other in episcopalian violet, threw a little color over the gloomy show.

But the large hall with painted statues amazed Amedee.  They were all there, statues of all the saints in little chapels placed promiscuously upon the shelves in rows.

No more hierarchy.  The Evangelist had, for a neighbor a little Jesuit saint—­an upstart of yesterday.  The unfortunate Fourier had at his side the Virgin Mary.  The Saviour of men elbowed St. Labre.  They were of plaster run into moulds, or roughly carved in wood, and were colored with paint as glaring as the red and blue of a barber’s pole, and covered with vulgar gildings.  Chins in the air, ecstatic eyes shining with varnish, horribly ugly and all new, they were drawn up in line like recruits at the roll-call, the mitred bishop, the martyr carrying his palm, St. Agnes embracing her lamb, St. Roch with his dog and shells, St. John the Baptist in his sheepskin, and, most ridiculous of all, poor Vincent de Paul carrying three naked children in his arms, like a midwife’s advertisement.

This frightful exhibition, which was of the nature of the Tussaud Museum or a masquerade, positively frightened Amedee.  He had recently been to his first communion, and was still burning with the mystical fever, but so much ugliness offended his already fastidious taste and threw him into his first doubt.

One day, about five o’clock, M. Violette and his son arrived at the “Bon Marche des Paroisses,” and found Uncle Isidore in the room where the painted statues were kept, superintending—­the packing of a St. Michel.  The last customer of the day was just leaving, the Bishop ‘in partibus’ of Trebizonde, blessing M. Gaufre.  The little apoplectic man, the giver of holy water, left alone with his clerks, felt under restraint no longer.

“Pay attention, you confounded idiot!” he cried to the young man just ready to lay the archangel in the shavings.  “You almost broke the dragon’s tail.”

Then, noticing Amedee and M. Violette who had just entered: