se do you want me to tell
you?"

The Abbe Patouille appeared in no way disturbed by this announcement.

"I say once more, my son," he replied, "that these unhappy illusions,
these dreams of a deeply troubled soul, are to be ascribed to the
deplorable state of your conscience. I believe, moreover, that I can
detect the particular circumstance that has caused your unstable mind
thus to come to grief. During the winter in company with Monsieur
Sariette and your Uncle Gaetan, you came, in an evil frame of mind, to
see the Chapel of the Holy Angels in this church, then undergoing
repair. As I observed on that occasion, it is impossible to keep artists
too closely to the rules of Christian art; they cannot be too strongly
enjoined to respect Holy Writ and its authorized interpreters. Monsieur
Eugene Delacroix did not suffer his fiery genius to be controlled by
tradition. He brooked no guidance and, here, in this chapel he has
painted pictures which in common parlance we call lurid, compositions of
a violent, terrible nature which, far from inspiring the soul with
peace, quietude, and calm, plunge it into a state of agitation. In them
the angels are depicted with wrathful countenances, their features are
sombre and uncouth. One might take them to be Lucifer and his companions
meditating their revolt. Well, my son, it was these pictures, acting
upon a mind already weakened and undermined by every kind of
dissipation, that have filled it with the trouble to which it is at
present a prey."

But Maurice would have none of it.

"Oh, no! Monsieur l'Abbe," he cried, "it is not Eugene Delacroix's
pictures that have been troubling me. I didn't so much as look at them.
I am completely indifferent to that kind of art."

"Well, then, my son, believe me: there is no truth, no reality, in any
of the story you have just related to me. Your guardian angel has
certainly not appeared to you."

"But, Abbe," replied Maurice, who had the most absolute confidence in
the evidence of the senses, "I saw him tying up a woman's shoe-laces and
putting on the trousers of a suicide."

And stamping his feet on the asphalt, Maurice called as witnesses to the
truth of his words the sky, the earth, all nature, the towers of St.
Sulpice, the walls of the great seminary, the Fountain of the _Quatre
Eveques_, the public lavatory, the cabmen's shelter, the taxis and motor
'buses' shelter, the trees, the passers-by, the dogs, the sparrows, the
flower-selle