“First, never to do so again,” said the Marquis; “then to judge yourself and your life.”

“There is truth in what you say,” replied Dorsenne, “but you are mistaken if you think that the most intellectual men of our age have not suffered, too, from that abuse of thought.  What is to be done?  Ah, it is the disease of a century too cultivated, and there is no cure.”

“There is one,” interrupted Montfanon, “which you do not wish to see....  You will not deny that Balzac was the boldest of our modern writers.  Is it necessary for me, an ignorant man, to recite to you the phrase which governs his work:  ’Thought, principle of evil and of good can only be prepared, subdued, directed by religion.’  See?” he continued, suddenly taking his companion by the arm and forcing him to look into a transversal allee through the copse, “there he is, the doctor who holds the remedy for that malady of the soul as for all the others.  Do not show yourself.  They will have forgotten our presence.  But, look, look! ....Ah, what a meeting!”

The personage who appeared suddenly in that melancholy, deserted garden, and in a manner almost supernatural, so much did his presence form a living commentary to the discourse of the impassioned nobleman, was no other than the Holy Father himself, on the point of entering his carriage for his usual drive.  Dorsenne, who only knew Leo XIII from his portraits, saw an old man, bent, bowed, whose white cassock gleamed beneath the red mantle, and who leaned on one side upon a prelate of his court, on the other upon one of his officers.  In drawing back, as Montfanon had advised, in order not to bring a reprimand upon the keepers, he could study at his leisure the delicate face of the Sovereign Pontiff, who paused at a bed of roses to converse familiarly with a kneeling gardener.  He saw the infinitely indulgent smile of that spirituelle mouth.  He saw the light of those eyes which seemed to justify by their brightness the ‘lumen in coelo’ applied to the successor of Pie IX by a celebrated prophecy.  He saw the venerable hand, that white, transparent hand, which was raised to give the solemn benediction with so much majesty, turn toward a fine yellow rose, and the fingers bend the flower without plucking it, as if not to harm the frail creation of God.  The old Pope for a second inhaled its perfume and then resumed his walk toward the carriage, vaguely to be seen between the trunks of the green oaks.  The black horses set off at a trot, and Dorsenne, turning again toward Montfanon, perceived large tears upon the lashes of the former zouave, who, forgetting the rest of their conversation, said, with a sigh:  “And that is the only pleasure allowed him, who is, however, the successor of the first apostle, to inhale his flowers and drive in a carriage as rapidly as his horses can go!  They have procured four paltry kilometers of road at the foot of the terrace where we were half an hour since.  And he goes on, he goes on, thus deluding