ung people, distrust yourselves; but if you find yourselves with old men,
distrust them, and avoid allowing them to take hold of your chin."

Cazotte was right, for old men begin with that. I would not dare either to
assert that the charms of his cook were safe from his indiscreet curiosity,
for it is there too that old men finish; and we must swear not at all.
Everybody knows the wise man's precept: "When in doubt, abstain."

At the period of which I am speaking to you, he reigned in a good parish,
well frequented by devout ladies, both young and middle-aged, where from
the height of his pulpit he laid down his laws to his kneeling people,
without hindrance or control.

He was happy, as all wise men ought to be. Happy to be in the world,
satisfied to be a Cure. "It is the first of professions," he often used to
say, and there is not one of them which can be compared to it.

"I am a village Cure,
Where I live most modestly;
I'm no important person,
But I'm happy and content
No, I do not envy aught,
For my wants they are but small.
How I love to pass my days
Within the house of God!"

But if he had complained, it would have been very hard, and everybody in
the diocese, from Monseigneur the Bishop to his sexton, would have risen
with indignation and called him, "Ungrateful wretch." For Ridoux was
favoured above all his colleagues; above all his colleagues Divine
Providence bad overwhelmed him with its favours. He possessed in his
parish, in his very church, at his door, beneath his eyes, beneath his
hand, a real blessing from Heaven, a grace of God, a Pactolus always
rolling down a mine of Peru, a secret of an alchemist, the veritable
philosopher's stone caught sight of by Nicolas Flamel, and vainly sought
for till the time of Cagliostro, a marvel which made him at once honoured
and envied, which made his name celebrated, which gave him a preponderant
voice in the Chapter and a place in the episcopal Council, which swelled
his heart with pride and his money-bag with crowns; he had in the choir of
his church behind the mother altar, in a splendid glass-case, laid on a bed
of blue velvet ... an old yellow skeleton! The relics of a saint.

But there are saints and saints; those which do miracles, and those which
do them not, those which work and those which rest.

Monsieur Ridoux's saint worked.

LXIII.

THE MIRACLES.

"Miracles have served for the foundation,
and will serve for the