case
the bishop was prepared to put him out with his own hands.

But Theodosius stood with bowed head, and in a low voice confessed his
guilt and entreated forgiveness. 'What signs can you show me that your
repentance is real?' asked Ambrose. 'A crime like yours is not to be
expiated lightly.'

'Tell me what to do, and I will do it,' said Theodosius.

* * * * *

And the proof that Ambrose demanded was neither fasting nor scourging
nor gifts to the church. 'It was that the emperor should write where now
he stood, on the tablets that he always took with him, an order
delaying for thirty days the announcement of any decree passed by a
reigning emperor which carried sentence of death or confiscation of
property to his subjects.' Further, that after the thirty days had
passed the sentence and the circumstances which called it forth must be
considered over again, to make quite sure that no injustice should be
committed. To this Theodosius willingly agreed; not only because it was
the token of repentance imposed on him by Ambrose, but because his own
sense of right and justice made him welcome a law by which the people no
longer should be at the mercy of one man's rage.

The law was written down and read out so that those who stood around
might hear; then Ambrose drew back the bar across the porch, and
Theodosius once more entered the church.

PALISSY THE POTTER

Four hundred years ago a little boy called Bernard Palissy was born in a
village of France, not very far from the great river Garonne. The
country round was beautiful at all times of year--in spring with
orchards in flower, in summer with fields of corn, in autumn with
heavy-laden vines climbing up the sides of the hills, down which rushing
streams danced and gurgled. Further north stretched wide heaths gay with
broom, and vast forests of walnut and chestnut, through which roamed
hordes of pigs, greedy after the fallen chestnuts that made them so fat,
or burrowing about the roots of the trees for the truffles growing just
out of sight. When the peasants who owned the pigs saw them sniffing and
scratching in certain places, they went out at once and dug for
themselves, for, truffles as well as pigs, were thought delicious
eating, and fetched high prices from the rich people in Perigueux or
even Bordeaux.

But the forests of the province of Perigord contained other inhabitants
than the pigs and their masters, and these w