An old country woman, armed with a large basket and umbrella, sat right down upon me, and laughingly observed in patois to her neighbor, that she thought I should be converted into an omelette. I was quite of her opinion; but in spite of the discomforts arising from heat and overcrowding, we were a very merry party, and our trials soon diminished as the passengers alighted first at one village, then at another; and the latter part of the way our party was reduced to a Dominican father, a shepherd and his wife, and ourselves.

After we left St. Zachary, the country became more and more picturesque, and the ascent steeper. Our road lay through a narrow gorge with rocks on either side, clothed with trees and shrubs. As we approached the plain of St. Maximin, the old shepherd and his wife pointed out to us on our right, the ridge of rocks in which lies the Sainte-Baume. Good old souls! their excitement grew more and more intense as we neared the place from which the spot could be seen, so eager were they to be the first to show us where it was.

At last we came to the plain of St. Maximin. I shall never forget the magnificent scene. The surrounding rocks were of a beautiful purple color, and the sun sank to rest in a glorious golden light.

M. l'Abbé directed our attention to a little church, perched on one of these rocks, and dedicated to one of the companions of St. Mary Magdalen.

As we drew near St. Maximin we passed a curious pillar on our right called the St. Pilon, or Holy Pillar, of the Aurelian way. It is about four feet in height, and supports a figure of St. Mary Magdalen borne aloft by four angels dressed in the Benedictine habit. This pillar marks the spot to which St. Mary Magdalen was carried by Holy Angels on the day of her death.

She walked from thence to St. Maximin, where according to St. Francis of Sales, she received her last Communion, and then gave back her spirit to God.

We reached St. Maximin about seven o'clock, but it was quite dark, and we could see little or nothing of the town. Immediately after dinner we hurried off to the Dominican chapel, and were just in time to hear the Salve Regina sung by the whole community, consisting of forty or fifty monks.

There were many of the townspeople present. At the side of the altar was a fresco of our Lord appearing to St. Mary Magdalen, after a painting by the celebrated Dominican artist Père Berson.

Early next morning we wended our way to the Church of St. Maximin. This famous church and the adjoining monastery belonged to the Dominicans from the thirteenth century until the great French Revolution.

Père Lacordaire succeeded in repurchasing the monastery, but the church is still served by secular priests. We hope the day is not far distant when it will be again served by the children of St. Dominic.

It was in this monastery that Père Lacordaire wrote the last pages of "Sainte Marie Madeline” only a few months before his death.

Under the nave of the church is the celebrated crypt where St. Mary Magdalen was buried, and which now possesses the relics which were saved from destruction during the revolution.

I can hardly describe one's feelings as I entered the crypt for Mass.

Here were the remains of one who had loved and waited on our Lord during his mortal life, and who had been forgiven by Him for many sins because she had loved much.

In this solemn little crypt M. l'Abbé said Mass, a Dominican

father served it, and two peasant people besides our little party formed the whole congregation.

Among the relics now preserved at the back of the altar is the head of the Saint. During the course of eighteen centuries a small fragment of flesh continued to adhere to the left temple. It is known by the name of Noli me tangere or Touch me not, and is, according to tradition, the spot where our Lord, the author of our life, touched the saint on the morning of his Resurrection. The fact is fully confirmed by the medical men who made an investigation by command of the magistrates in 1780, shortly before the fragment became detached.

On the gospel side of the altar is the alabaster tomb where the body of St. Mary Magdalen was first laid, and on the opposite side is that of St. Maximin, after whom the church is named, and who was one of the seventy-two disciples of our Lord. He came over with our saint and her companions, and he it was who gave her her last Communion, and buried her.

There are also the tombs of St. Sidonius, successor of St. Maximin in the see of Aix, and a tomb of the Holy Innocents, which Père Lacordaire suggests may have contained the relics of some of the Innocents murdered by Herod, and the remains of children who had died after baptism.

In the middle of the day we had to leave this holy and memorable spot, and we once more resumed our journey to the Saint-Baume. This time at least we had no difficulty in finding a carriage, and after two hours' drive, we reached Naus, where we were compelled to descend and take donkeys for the latter part of the way.

The road is very bad from Naus to the Dominican hospice that lies at the foot of the Sainte-Baume. But, in spite of this drawback, we enjoyed the ascent very much; the

views of the surrounding country, and the great plain of St. Maximin, were most charming; the air was scented with wild lavender and other herbs, which grew in great profusion by the wayside, and over the adjoining rocks.

We were very kindly received by the fathers at the hospice, and after supper we went to the chapel for the Salve, but as this is quite a small establishment, and there are not many religious attached to it, the singing was not so grand or imposing as on the preceding evening.

The next morning we started a little after six o'clock for the Holy Cave. Rain was falling, and a dense mist enveloped the mountains, so as almost to conceal from our view a beautiful wood of beech, oak, and yew trees, with large boulders of rock peeping out here and there, through which we passed, and in which it is said that no venomous reptile or insect is ever found.

By the wayside were several little oratories, which formerly contained bas-reliefs, commemorating different events of the life of St. Mary Magdalen. They were erected by Jean Ferrier, Archbishop of Arles, in 1516, but were much defaced and mutilated during the Revolution.

After an hour's walk, we reached the Sainte-Baume; but we were still in a region of mist and cloud, and could not see a yard in front of us. A lay-brother came out of the small hospice close by, and insisted on our going in; but he would not allow us to enter the Holy Cave until we had rested after our walk.

This immense cave is situated 2008 feet above the level of the sea.

Facing you as you enter is the high altar, and at the back of it is a small rock, eight or fourteen feet high, which is called La Penitence. It was on this spot that St.

Mary Magdalen spent the greater part of her time in prayer. A statue of the saint crowns the summit.

You ascend it by a little flight of steps on the epistle side of the altar.

La Penitence is the only dry spot in the whole cave, the rest is excessively damp, and the drops of water which are perpetually falling down the rocks have been poetically named by the peasantry, "Magdalen tears."

There are two other altars in the cave; but funds are very much needed to replace them with others more suitable, as also to complete the floor, which is only partially paved.

After breakfast, at the hospice, we returned to the grotto, for the pilgrims' sermon, which is always preached whenever a congregation of pilgrims, however small, is assembled. The sermon was followed by Benediction, one of the most solemn services which can be imagined.

In spite of mist and clouds we resolved on visiting Saint Pilon, 200 feet above the Holy Grotto, and where we are told St. Mary Magdalen was carried by angels seven times a day, to listen to celestial music. After an hour's walk over fallen stones and rocks, we reached the summit and entered the little chapel, where Mass is sometimes said. Here we waited

until nearly 12 o'clock, the mountain being still enveloped in mist, when one of our party proposed singing the Magnificat. We had barely finished it when a sudden change came; a strong current of wind cleared the clouds away, and we saw the beautiful plains below brilliant in sunshine; valleys, rocks, sea, and mountains, all lay unfolded beneath us.

We enjoyed this glorious scene for a few moments only; as rapidly as this bright vision appeared, as rapidly did it pass away, and again we were enveloped in mist.

Then we resumed our downward journey, but when we reached the lower hospice, the omnibus had started, and there was nothing left for us but to walk back to St. Zachary, so after a hurried dinner and a short interview with the Guest Master, we set out once

more.

We reached St. Zachary just in time to catch the omnibus for Amiol, and there we again took the railway to Marseilles.

The pilgrimage which I have thus briefly attempted to sketch seems almost unknown to travellers, but from the happiness and satisfaction it afforded our party, I feel that I cannot too earnestly recommend persons passing through Marseilles to follow our example, and make a detour to Sainte-Baume and St. Maximin.

VOL. VII.-12

I AM a very quiet man, fond of idle dreaming, fond of speculative studies, fond of a great many things that rarely make headway in this practical world, but which fitly furnish forth a life that has been almost blank of incident.

The love of seclusion has grown upon me as moss grows upon a rooted stone; I could not wrench myself away from it, even if I would. Of worldly pelf I have little, but that little suffices me; and, although my existence seems selfish-nay, is so-I lack not interest in my kind. I catch hold of a slight thread of reality, and weave it into a tissue of romance. The facts that I cannot know, imagination supplies me with; and my own temperament, still and melancholy, suffuses the story with a tender twilight hue, which is not great anguish, but which takes no tint of joy.

My abode is in one of the retired streets. I know not where a man can be so utterly alone as in this great Babylon. My favorite room has a bay window overhanging the pavement, and in its cornices, its door-frames, and its lofty carved mantelshelf, testifies to better days than it is ever likely to see again. The rents in this quarter are low; and though, at certain long intervals, the street is as forsaken and silent as Tadmor in the wilderness, still, the surging rush, the rattle, the hum of the vast city, echoes through my solitude from dawn til dark. I love that echo in my heart. It is company. If I had been a happy, I should have been a busy man—a worker instead of a dreamer. That little IF-that great impassable gulf between the actual and the possible!

I do not begin and end my romances in a day, in a week, in a month, or even in a year, as storytellers do. The threads run on and on: sometimes smoothly, sometimes in hopeless entanglement. The merest trifle may suggest them; now, it is the stealthy, startled looking back of a man over his shoulder, as he hurries down the street, as if Fate with her sleuthhounds, Vengeance and Justice, were following close upon his traces; now, the downcast gray head of a loiterer, hands in pockets, chin on breast, drivelling aimlessly nowhere; again, it is the pitiful face of a little child clad in mourning; or, it is the worn figure of a woman in shabby garments, young, toil some, hopeless; or, it is the same figure flaunting in silks and laces, but a hundredfold more toilsome, more hopeless. Occasionally I take hold of a golden thread that runs from a good and a happy life. Such a thread I caught three years ago, and the tissue into which I wrought it is completed at last. This is it:

I have mentioned my bay window overhanging the street; in this window is a luxuriously cushioned old-fashioned red settee. By this settee, a solid-limbed table, on which my landlady every morning lays my breakfast, and the newlycome-in newspaper. It was while leisurely enjoying my coffee and unconsciously watching the tremulous motion of the acacias which overtop the low garden wall of a house a little higher up the street, that I first laid my hand upon the gleaming thread which shines athwart this gray cobweb romance

cobweb, I say, because so slight is it, so altogether fancy-spun, that