It struck the confessor as strange that Regis should elect to stay at a distance alone, despite the rule. However, he made no com

ment.

Regis settled a few small debts, left a few directions, and started early next morning, three days before Christmas Day.

The weather was appalling; and on December 23 night fell while he was still on his road. He lost his way, went to the left instead of the right, and found himself in the dead of night once more at Veyrines, not La Louvesc. And a tragic incident occurred. In the village, where but a week before he had preached and endeared himself to all, no place was found for him. Did he go knocking, from door to closed door, unable to make himself heard, in that howling gale? Even on the windows thickly curtained with fleeces and hides, was his tapping inaudible? Were human hearts too hard, or too timorous, supposing he was heard, to open the doors and let the freezing night and eddying snow into huts hard to warm, together with an unknown traveller, perhaps a brigand? Or did Regis, eager to imitate,

in any published roll of honour, yet to be recognized and hailed in heaven, where their voices join to make the hymn whose sound is as the voice of many

waters."

66

at that Christmas season, the night which Mary and Joseph once endured at Bethlehem, not even try to find a lodging? We prefer to fancy this. In the black village, all iron and granite against the furious storm, Regis and the brother stood, two living creatures, unheeded by winds and snows and houses. They crawled to a ruined barn, and there, snowed upon, howled round about by the long hours of hurricane, they spent the night.

Very early on Christmas Eve, his teeth chattering with the fever which had gripped him, but determined not to cheat La Louvesc of its promised Gospel, he pushed on across the mountain. Immense crowds awaited him. He went straight to the church, preached, heard confessions, said his Mass, and heard confessions again, preaching at intervals all that evening, and then all the night. Christmas Day was spent in like manner, and again on St. Stephen's Day he heard confessions till his Mass, which he said very late. After this he left the confessional, which was too thronged for privacy, and sat in the sanctuary by the Altar. A broken window above his head poured its icy stream of air on to his shoulders, and when evening came the agony of his pneumonia mastered him. He was carried to the presbytery, and put in an arm-chair near the

fire. Thither again the crowds pursued him. He heard twenty more confessions, and then fainted. He was put to bed and rose no more. He lay there for four days. A doctor came from Annonay and three Jesuit confrères. He went to confession, but spoke, else, hardly at all. He had the docility of the dying; he would have preferred milk, and the poor man's food, to the soup he was offered; he asked to be laid on straw, to die as Christ was born. Both of these humble requests were refused to him, and he submitted with serenity. The year ran out, and just before midnight on New Year's Eve, the last weariness passed through him, and he murmured that he felt ill. Then to the Brother, Bideau, he whispered: "Brother I see Our Lord and His Mother opening Heaven to me. Finally he spoke the prayer, Into Thy hands I commend my spirit, and so died.

Regis was buried where he died; and when the Jesuits wished to translate his body to Le Puy, the mountain-folk, jealous for their treasure, buried it deeper still and covered the coffin with a perfect roof of iron bars. So he was left in peace among these peasants whose habits he knew so well, whose patois he talked, and whose food he shared. To him, in his Basilica, solidly established more than 3,000

feet aloft amid the mountains to-day, the crowds converge. Round his relics, enshrined above the high-altar, a vast circular balustrade forms a Communion-rail, and fifty to sixty thousand pilgrims annually from all parts of France make crowns round Regis while they receive the Living Bread he died to bring them. In a hundred ways his influence has radiated through space and time. I will mention but one institution in the foundation of which his name is an essential element-the Society of the Cenacle; and two souls whom his influence went primarily to form-the marvellous missionary nun, Mother Duchesne of the Sacred Heart Society; and the Curé d'Ars himself, who only after a pilgrimage to La Louvesc succeeded in his efforts to become a priest, and throughout his life kept Regis for his model.

ST. PETER CLAVER

I.

"A man shall be as an hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land."-ISA. xxii. 2.

PETER CLAVER was born in 1581 in a farm on the south slope of the Pyrenees, near Verdu. His parents were folks of good descent to whom fortune had played false, and though the child, who was regarded as born in answer to prayer, was dedicated from the outset to the Church, and would not, in consequence, have to earn his living, he spent his boyhood in no luxurious surroundings. The traditions, it may be, of his family, and the mystic destiny before him, accentuated in the growing lad that something of melancholy and severe which the Spanish race displays, and which even ran the risk of softening into a timidity and dreaminess which might have cheated his higher aspirations. His uncle, a Canon of Solsona,* offered to educate him privately; but his father, seeing

* A town some twenty miles west of Manresa.