s, and all churchmen especially
anxious for promotion in this world or salvation in the next. Worn-out
dukes and duchesses of the Faubourg Saint-Germain united in this
enterprise of pious reaction with the frivolous youngsters, the petits
creves, who haunt the purlieus of Notre Dame de Lorette. The great
church of the monastery was handsomely rebuilt and a multitude of
altars erected; and beautiful frescoes and stained windows came from
the leaders of the reaction. The whole effect was, perhaps, somewhat
theatrical and thin, but it showed none the less earnestness in making
the old "Isle of Saints" a protest against the hated modern world.

As if to bid defiance still further to modern liberalism, great store of
relics was sent in; among these, pieces of the true cross, of the
white and purple robes, of the crown of thorns, sponge, lance, and
winding-sheet of Christ,--the hair, robe, veil, and girdle of the
Blessed Virgin; relics of St. John the Baptist, St. Joseph, St. Mary
Magdalene, St. Paul, St. Barnabas, the four evangelists, and a multitude
of other saints: so many that the bare mention of these treasures
requires twenty-four distinct heads in the official catalogue recently
published at the monastery. Besides all this--what was considered even
more powerful in warding off harm from the revived monastery--the bones
of Christian martyrs were brought from the Roman catacombs and laid
beneath the altars.(264)

(264) See the Guide des Visiteurs a Lerins, published at the Monastery
in 1880, p. 204; also the Histoire de Lerins, mentioned below.

All was thus conformed to the medieval view; nothing was to be left
which could remind one of the nineteenth century; the "ages of faith"
were to be restored in their simplicity. Pope Leo XIII commended to the
brethren the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas as their one great object of
study, and works published at the monastery dwelt upon the miracles of
St. Honorat as the most precious refutation of modern science.

High in the cupola, above the altars and relics, were placed the bells.
Sent by pious donors, they were solemnly baptized and consecrated
in 1871, four bishops officiating, a multitude of the faithful being
present from all parts of Europe, and the sponsors of the great tenor
bell being the Bourbon claimant to the ducal throne of Parma and his
duchess. The good bishop who baptized the bells consecrated them with
a formula announcing their efficacy in drivin