continuation
of the Church until Antichrist,
until the end."

(_Pensees de PASCAL_).

The miserable herd of free-thinkers, people who have no faith, those who
are still plunged in the rut of unbelief, are ignorant perhaps that all the
saints have done miracles, that they have all begun in that way, that that
is the condition _sine qua non_, for entrance into the blessed
confraternity.

No money, no Swiss; no miracles, no saint. It is in vain that during all
your life you shall have been a model of candour and virtue; it is in vain
that you shall edify the universe by your piety and your good works, that
you shall have resisted like St. Antony the temptations of the flesh, that
you shall have covered yourself with hair-cloth like St. Theresa, with
venom like St. Veuillot, with filth like St. Alacoque or with lice like St.
Labre: it is in vain that you shall have been beaten with rods like St.
Roche, been scourged by your Confessor like St. Elizabeth, that finally you
shall have sinned only six instead of seven times a day; if at your death
you should not succeed in performing some fine miracle, you will never be
admitted into the Calendar.

The Pope causes your shade to appear before his sacred tribunal, and
according as the number of the dead whom you have raised to life is judged
sufficient or not, as the touch of your tibia or coccyx has cured the itch
or scrofula or not, you are admitted or excluded.

It is a difficult profession to be a saint, and is not for anyone who
wishes it.

Therefore, the candidates who die in the odour of sanctity hasten to
accomplish their regular total of prodigies, in order that our father the
Pope may be pleased to assign them a place in the highest heaven.

They have hardly closed their eyes before they begin to _operate_. Allured
by the hope of being crowned with a glorious halo, they display infinite
zeal, and we have seen them, from their tooth-stumps to their prepuce,
effecting the most marvellous miracles.

That of Jesus Christ--I speak of the prepuce--is preserved thus in several
churches; all of which contend for the honour of possessing the veritable
one. It is not yet exactly known which is the best; but all without
distinction work wonders, and at certain seasons of the year, are kissed by
pious young women.[1]

But this noble zeal of the saints lasts but for a time, and this is a proof
of the imperfection of human kind, that our faults and whims follow us ev