cedes merit, but not innocence-from those who abuse it in the precocious passions which I will not any longer even name. Vice stamps its image upon that brilliant flesh which touched the heart; it traces upon it shameful lines, premature and accusing wrinkles, an air of decrepitude which is neither a mark of time, nor of the meditations of a man given to austere duties, but the certain sign of depravity which has passed by, destroying. The furrow deepens with the shame, and we see those shadows appear among us, transparent and empty, as if the last judgment had already overtaken them, and presented them unveiled to the scorn of earth and heaven.

So is it with all our passions; each has its earthly and revealing punishment, destined to teach us that their road is false, and that happiness is not at the term of the joys which they bring to us. If voluptuousness destroys youth and life, gambling wrecks the most secure fortunes amidst grievous agonies, and intoxication, by constantly attacking reason, debases the intelligence whose first light it is, and lowers it to a state of stupidity which animality would disdain. Pride, which seems more cold, has however storms hidden under its icy surface, like those polar seas where the winds have perhaps less power and action, but which, at certain moments, dissolve their inert masses, and seem to announce to the world the

sinking of its foundations. Hatred and revenge brood under discontented pride, and deceived ambition has painful shocks which wound fallen men even to death. These, Gentlemen, are our daily spectacles within ourselves and without. Our soul is its first theatre, the world shows it to us enlarged, and history, faithful to the orders of God, writes upon the ruins of Tyre and Babylon the desolations of the past and threats against the future.

But the ordinary evils of man and mankind were not sufficient to teach us the end of the passions. God has prepared other warnings for them. In all things there is a catastrophe. Even as life ends in death; as a drama closes by a climax which is the result of the complications invented by the mind of the poet; so, in the drama of the passions turned aside from God, there must be a supreme shock, something striking, terrible, before which every curse must fade, even the sign of Cain, the first murderer, in order that every reasonable creature should be unable to doubt that life and happiness are not there, but that there, on the contrary, is the road of ruins which are never restored. Young men who hear me this morning, and who this evening will listen to your vices, you will not all be struck by the thunderbolt. The ancients said that it affects to fall on the high tops, as if the masters of the thunder

were jealous of their height, or would, in striking them, give a lesson to pride; so is it with whatever is extraordinary. There is in misfortune, as in genius and virtue, a sublime point which all men do not reach, and it is rare to be the chosen victim of a great expiation. I know not then which among you must pay the ransom of others to the justice of God; but when the night of Egypt comes, when the destroying angel passes, he will know more than I know, and he will not be deceived about those who are already predestinated for him. Before that night, however, before that sword which advances unseen by any, you may still hear me and reflect upon yourselves.

You have felt it, the joy which springs from the passions is not final. As soon as the intoxication is over, painful amazement, a void bitterly felt, remains in the soul. It may be filled again by new emotions; but it happens that it is reproduced more vast than before, and that painful succession between extreme enjoyment and deep dejection, between gleams of happiness and powerlessness to be happy, at length produces a constant state of sadness. The mystery of sadness is the opposite to that of joy. Joy results from a dilation and an exaltation of the soul; sadness contracts the heart and lessens it. Say not to the man who is attacked by it: Behold this

beautiful day! Say not: Hear this sweet music! Say not even to him: I love you! Light, harmony, love, all that is charming and good, does but irritate his hidden wound. He is devoted to the shades, and all appears to him as in a sepulchre where there is no air, and whose marble stifles him.

But this is only the dawn of expiation. As joy is not the term of happiness felt, sadness is not the term of unhappiness tasted. Beyond joy is ecstasy; beyond sadness is despair. A moment comes when all the powers of man, satiated, give him the invincible certainty of the world's nothingness. This universe so vast, the shadow of the infinite, in falling into a heart which has no more space-loses its own. Formerly the forlorn being needed but half a smile to open before him unbounded visions; now the adoration of earth would not touch him. He would judge it as it is-as nothing. For it is not conception that is wanting to him; he is in the full brightness of his understanding. It is not even truth, for the truth of the universe is nothing. What is wanting to him, is to believe and to be moved-is to see God behind things, and to feel, under the vestment which hides Him from us, the unction of His beauty. He does not feel it. Unlike that living man who was bound to a corpse, it is he who is dead. He transports his misery to the life which oppresses him,

and the palpitations of reality are no more for him than the tickings of a clock which measures his agony. It may be thought, so terrible is this voluntary suffering, that it does not exist; but, alas! despair, like ecstasy, is named in every tongue, and daily in a celebrated action, which is at the same time its proof and its effect, we have but too authentic a witness of it, if it be true that blood shed is the last seal of truth.

Despair has its martyrdom. When man no longer believes in the present world, and when the future has not appeared to sustain him, life becomes an insupportable burden. What is it to live when all is dead? What is it to live when truth no longer touches the mind, nor love the heart; when the senses themselves disdain voluptuousness, that last asylum of hope and faith? A look fixed, but without vision, holds the despairing one in a state of immobility. He listens, and no sound reaches him; no friend opens his door, no hand any longer touches his own. An infinite sense of being forsaken answers to the forlorn condition which he has brought upon himself. It is then that the angel of judgment lifts his sword; but he will not strike-his orders are not to strike. The guilty one must be the executioner, and endure, in suffering without remorse, a life without value.