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Sophia proved an apt scholar, and for the most part a willing one, though her instructor almost overstepped the bounds of prudence in the life which he required her to adopt.

She rose at dawn, while the rest of the family with the exception of her father were still asleep; and no sooner had he entered his workshop or taken his way to the vineyard than she set herself seriously to the duties of the day.

The first and most important of these was the hearing of Mass at her parish church, but immediately on her return from thence she ascended to her favourite garret and plunged into a course of study which, with the exception of meal times and of some necessary intercourse with her family, or with perhaps the rare interlude of a holiday, occupied her till nightfall.

These holidays occurred for the most part during the pleasant season of the vintage, when the whole family turned out to assist in the grape gathering; but some few extra days of liberty were also obtained by the occasional absence of her brother. Her chief delight in such happy times of idleness was to walk with her father to his vineyard, and there she would sit for hours-now watching the river Yonne, as it wound like a silver serpent through the meadows, now gazing on the graceful amphitheatre of low hills which rise between Mont Tholon and the Montagne St. Jacques-or she would plunge with her mind's eye into the deep forest beyond, inhaling its odours and tasting the sweetness of its solitude until her soul, rising above all material charms, dissolved itself into love and admiration for Him whose eternal beauty is, after all, but dimly shadowed forth in the works of his creation.

Sometimes, however, in the midst of these innocent and healthy recreations her schoolmaster would unexpectedly reappear, and there was nothing for it then, but to retrace her steps and bury herself once more in the garret with her books.

Sophie did this sadly enough, but she never failed in submission or obedience, taking her only consolation in the well used-up maxim "that pleasure is never unmixed with pain."

Happily for her Louis Barat was no mere schoolmaster, content if she learned well and nothing more; he possessed, on the contrary, an immense fund of unction and piety, and he knew how to soften his most rigorous exactions by holding forth the love of God both as their motive and reward.

Moreover, he was a poet before he was a mathematician, and he had a grace of language and delicacy of feeling which was sure to find its way to the heart of the young girl.

A little lamb, the plaything of her holidays, used to follow her wherever she went, and one day as she sat at work it came and laid itself down quietly at her feet.

Louis Barat saw it, and said immediately:

"Look at this lamb, my sister! What is it doing?

parently. But it loves--and all is said in that word!"

Nothing ap

Sophie understood him at once; and this spirit of quiet love, this

entire self-abandonment at the feet of the Good Shepherd became from that moment one of the favourite and most practical sanctities of her soul.

Gradually, as her education proceeded, and her extraordinary capacity developed itself more distinctly, her brother followed up the lead by enlarging the circle of study in which he had at first intended to confine it.

Latin (she used to say, laughingly, long afterwards that she had been a "Virgilienne" before she was a Christian) was soon mastered. Greek followed, and then botany, mathematics, and astronomy-in all of which sciences he was a distinguished professor; while by way of relaxation, he taught her Spanish and Italian-an addition to her stock of knowledge which stood her in good stead afterwards when, as foundress of an order, she had to communicate with her religious in the various languages of their nations.

Sophie's father entered fully into the ideas of her brother with regard to her education, but Madame Barat found it hard to reconcile herself to the incessant study imposed upon her child.

Her only aim, poor mother! and her sole ambition was to see Sophie respectably married and settled near her at "Joigny," and she often questioned herself and others as to the use of all this extra learning to the daughter of a poor artizan.

She asked in vain, for no one had as yet a clue to the answer; and even Louis Barat himself, though he felt it intuitively to be his duty to cultivate as much as possible the great gifts with which God had endowed his sister, had no distinct idea of the use to which they were afterwards to be applied.

She herself, however, had never forgotten her early desires to belong to God, though she knew not where or in what manner she would be enabled to accomplish it. But at last, on the marriage of her sister, in 1792, she openly declared her intention to her family.

No soul of meaner metal would have chosen such a moment for the avowal.

The reign of terror had just commenced; altar and throne had gone down before it, and the prisons of France were choked, not merely with crowds of unhappy aristocrats-the first objects of its fury-but with priests and religious dragged, men and women, from their parishes or convents to perish on the scaffold.

Even the little town of Joigny was already trembling in its grasp, and the peace of Sophie's own home was troubled by the persecution which his refusal to accept the oath of adherence to the civil power had drawn upon her brother.

Misled at first by the direction and example of his bishop, the too famous Loménie de Brienne, Louis Barat had taken as subdeacon the oath in question; but hardly had he done so ere his conscience smote him for the error into which he had quite unconsciously on his own part fallen.

To see a fault and to repair it was always one and the same thing with him, and he wrote at once to the Council of the Commune retracting the oath which he had been beguiled into taking. He then

returned to the college where he hoped to be allowed to live unmolested while he continued to superintend Sophie's education from thence. But summons after summons followed, calling upon him either to take the rejected oath anew or to abide the consequences of refusal; and he resolved at last to go to Paris, where being quite unknown he might hope to pursue his studies in peace, and to eke out a modest subsistence by giving lessons to any pupils he could find. But this hope also proved fallacious. An old college companion chancing to meet him on his arrival, denounced him on the spot; and in the month of May of the fatal 1793, he was cast into one of those prisons of black renown from whence men only came forth to die. From the moment when this news reached Joigny the life of his family became one long agony of woe.

His unhappy mother especially, yielded so helplessly to grief and despair that they feared at last her mind would give way beneath the pressure. She neither slept nor spoke, and as she resolutely refused all nourishment her strength rapidly declined. In this emergency Sophie found at last a means of compelling her to eat. Day after day her mother rose from table without having touched a morsel, and at last Sophie pretended to follow her example. She declined dish after dish as her mother passed them to her; and when the latter, roused to attention by this proceeding, inquired if she were ill, she answered resolutely:

"No, mother, I am not ill; but as long as you decline to eat I have made up my mind to do so also. By this means, at any rate, we shall die together."

Touched by this affectionate devotion, and fearing perhaps that Sophie might really put her threat into execution, Madame Barat consented to her daughter's wishes; and as soon as with proper nourishment she had regained her strength she acquired also grace to bear with more resignation than hitherto the disposition of Providence with regard to her son.

The latter, meantime, was enduring all the multiplied sufferings which it was the will of the sovereign people to inflict upon their victims. Tied two and three together, placed upon rough charrettes and exposed to the jeers and insults of the mob, the unhappy captives were dragged, without motive or explanation, from one prison to another; and in this way Louis Barat, after remaining a short time at the Conciergerie was taken first to St. Pelagie, then to Bicêtre, then to St. Lazare, and finally to the Luxembourg, where he remained until the death of Robespierre put an end to the reign of terror.

Louis, however, did not receive his liberty until the February succeeding that event, just a year and eight months from his first detention. He came forth from prison disappointed indeed of martyrdom, but burning all the more intensely with zeal to do and suffer something for his God; and he received ordination almost immediately afterwards at the hands of Mgr. de Barral, the former bishop of Troyes.

At first he thought of foreign missions and then of joining the Jesuits in their Russian exile; but both these projects falling to the

ground he returned to Joigny and resumed the education of his sister Sophie.

She had just entered her sixteenth year, and her eldest nephew (a venerable priest, who quite lately died at Lille, and who was of course a very young child at the time of which we are treating) used always to declare that she remained engraven on his memory as an incarnate image of chastity, or of that heavenly wisdom from whence she took her name; while there was a modest grace beaming over her face and person, and giving softness to her slightest movements, which, even without beauty, must have attracted notice.

Her dress was chiefly remarkable for its simplicity; and if, in obedience to the remonstrances of her friends she consented for a time to make it a little more distinguished, even to trying the experiment of powdering her hair, these unaccustomed vanities were soon repented, and no sooner repented than renounced for ever.

Idolised by her mother, and treated with as much deference by her juvenile associates as if she were really the princess of her childish dreams, her very gifts seemed likely to be turned against herself by stifling her youthful desires for perfection beneath the incense of flattery and praise which they drew down continually upon her.

The keen eye of Louis Barat soon perceived the danger, and in order to avert it, he resolved upon taking his sister with him to Paris, in which city he had decided on residing for the future.

This idea found little favour in the eyes either of the mother or the daughter.

Madame Barat protested that she could not live without her child; and the latter, sympathising with and sharing in this feeling, tried hard to persuade both her brother and herself that her duty pointed clearly to the same quiet life at home which she had led so far, and which would enable her hereafter to become the help and solace of her parents in their declining years. Vanquished for the moment, but not convinced, Louis returned alone to Paris; but he was not the man to give up a design because of the difficulties by which it was surrounded, and after a long correspondence with his sister he went back to Joigny, this time resolved upon having his own way.

Sophie's father, as usual, was the first to yield. He saw that his daughter was beginning, probably on account of these conflicting opinions, to grow listless and lose ground. He knew he could safely trust her to his son, and he felt besides that brother and sister could be of much mutual assistance to each other in the life which it was proposed they should lead together in Paris.

Pressed by her husband with these unanswerable reasons, Madame Barat gave way at last, but she took good care to couple her consent with the express condition that Sophie should return every year at the vintage time and spend her vacations at Joigny.

The consent of both parents having been thus obtained, Louis Barat left no time for idle regrets, but took his sister with him at once to Paris.

Though she was accompanied by a young friend, who was going hither likewise, the journey could hardly have been a pleasant one for

Sophie. She loved her parents and her peaceful home too well to desire to leave them; and Paris itself must have been rather an object of terror to her mind, associated as it was with the prison and guillotine from which her brother had so narrowly escaped.

Louis Barat made no attempt to soothe or mitigate her sorrow. Bred himself in the school of martyrdom, and all on fire with zeal to give glory to God, both in his own person and that of his sister, he had no notion of allowing the pleasures of travelling to lighten its fatigues.

A journey of many days in a public conveyance does not present any very pleasurable ideas to the mind, but Louis Barat was too stern a disciplinarian to allow of its length and weariness being beguiled by anything like sight-seeing or even lively conversation.

The approach to Paris might naturally have excited the curiosity and imagination of both his young companions, but he took care to repress all indulgence of such feelings by the observation, that a spirit of prayer and recollection ought to absorb every lighter sentiment on entering for the first time a city, where the churches were closed, religion proscribed, and the very stones of the street still red with the blood of martyrs who had perished in defence of both.

Sophie had a soul to comprehend him, and it was therefore in the midst of the religious silence thus recommended that she entered the great city, and descended at the house of Madame Duval, a holy and venerable woman who had undertaken to give a home both to brother and sister during their residence in Paris.

(To be concluded in our next.)

THE CHANCES OF WAR.

BY A. WHITELOCK.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE DANCE OF DEATH.

"Did they dare, did they dare, to slay Owen Roe O'Neill ?

Yes, they slew with poison him they feared to meet with steel"
Thomas Davis.

CIVILISED Society supports, and has long supported a remarkable class of individuals whom we may describe as "idle women of fashion." What purpose their existence serves in the social system can be determined by no principle of social economy. They contribute to swell the ranks of society, but can hardly be said to exist for

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