the Baptist. Next, the abridgment of the history of the Church of France in her great bishops: St. Nicholas, their patron; St. Clement, spiritual father of St. Denys of Paris; St. Savinien, who brought the faith to Chartres; St. Lubin, its most popular bishop; St. Fulbert, the builder of the present cathedral; St. Yoes, one of his successors, the great canonist surnamed: "the Terror and Delight of Kings," and St. Martin, who made so many converts in the vicinity. There is a fascination about the old spot; the mind and heart keep reverting to it, as though the graces so lavishly bestowed, the hearts so generously relieved within the sacred precincts in the long, long past, beckoned and caressingly compelled the soul to remain. But, obliged at length to leave, the traveller looks back lovingly upon the dreamy, splendid structure, its unnumbered statues, its airy grace and adamantine solidity, its soaring pinnacles, its sailing rooks cawing the mysterious language of the past.

Thou art a page in the history of humanity, O beautiful Cathedral of Chartres, from the creation of the world to its final judgment, black with time,

aglow with the light of the loving eyes that have rested upon thee, vocal with dear, dead memories! Venerable pile! Mary's first and oldest sanctuary, the Benedicite of Christian temples where all the works of the Lord praise the Lord, the angels and the virtues, the sun. and moon, the spirits of heat and cold, of summer and winter, of glow and of gloom, all living creatures, priests and people, Ananias, Azarias and Misael praise the Lord.

From the hand of Solomon to the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, four hundred years; from the hand of Esdras to the hand of Titus, not six hundred years, and twice the grand old temple was swept off the face of the earth, to rise thereon no more.

But this great Gothic shrine has stood unmolested and perfect as it stands to-day since Bishop Pierre de Munci sang the solemn rite of dedication more than six centuries ago.

Ah, ever may it sanctify the winds of earth, this sweet, harmonious hymn to our dear and beautiful Mary, for surely if we forget to praise her these stones will rebuke us. "Quia si hi tacuerint, lapides clamabunt."

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LMOST akin to feeling shame for one's parents, is the way of not a few Christians with regard to the saints. To print anything bearing on their lives is like a last resort, the straw at which the drowning hack clutches. There is, it would seem, only this much of common ground, that the notice of a saint takes up space. Reading such a treatise, one suspects a design there to better his life, and the thought makes him wary. Were it not for evil and the doers thereof, in very truth, the makers of books and builders of journals would be in sore straits. Misdeeds are always made interesting, and malefactors positively captivating. The view naturally taken is that a holy life is rather irksome, and that a holy person is a man of straw. The principle behind this is sound, but its application is awry. Courage is admirable, but it is the villain who is craven, and the saint who is brave.

Then there is another baffling problem about the saints. They all can help us, and none can be said to receive more than a fit meed of devotion. But it is certainly true that many, for no known reason, receive not a tithe of what is due even the lowliest of those in whose honor churches may be raised. There are, among these neglected ones, some who have lived almost in our own times, and whose lives were literally crowded with. deeds sufficient to make an irreligious man famous. It cannot be that the instinct of the truly sanctified heart is astray. Rather it must be that there is something human that changes or diverts the current of popular devotions. Theologically, it is difficult to see how one saint more than another can find lost articles, or how one form of devotion to Our Blessed Lord more than

another will pledge us our eternal salvation. However, there is no jealousy among the saints; and the unknown St. Modestus is as happy as the favorite St. Anthony-perhaps more so.

In the calendar for October there is a name that brings these two reflections very forcibly to to mind. St. Louis Bertrand was a man of action of the kind that most provokes our admiration, a man filled with courage and strength; and yet his life is unknown. Though a Spaniard, he is in at way an American saint, for he lived for years on our continent. As a saint he makes in effect little appeal to the faithful, for outside the Office of the Church, and his own Order, there is no special devotion paid him. There is nothing forbidding or cold in the austerity of his piety. Everything he did tends to charm one with the religious life. As for his public life, there are many thrilling novels that would pale beside it. The special point that deserves our study in the case of St. Louis is that he is one of the few saints that have lived in America, and that he is, after God and the Blessed Virgin, the patron of a great part of our continent.

St. Louis Bertrand was born in the year 1525. Valencia, in old Spain, was his home. It is a remarkable town, even in Spain, the land of romance. The citizen of this town feels not the handicap of commonplace surroundings. Its whole aspect is Moorish, and one feels it is a geographical anomaly. With the blue Mediterranean all about it, it seems for all the world as though it had merely floated in from some far-off Oriental land and were left stranded and alone. far from all the companions of its youth.

Our saint's father was married twice. On the death of his first wife, to whom he was deeply attached, he sought to

retire to the solitude of the cloister. Choosing the almost sepulchral retreat of the Carthusians, he became a novice in the monastery of Portobello. But one night in a dream, St. Bruno, founder of the Order, and St. Vincent Ferrer, appeared to him, and told him God's will was that he again return to the world. It was after this epoch that his son Louis was born. Quite like any other child's were the early years of the saint, save that he cried very often, a presage, the quaint old. biographers write, of the man's sorrow for the sins of mankind. At the dawn of manhood God called Louis to the religious life. At the age of eighteen he received the habit of the Order of St. Dominic, and three years later at the very early age of twenty-one he was ordained a priest. Later on he was made novice-master. To all appearances his life was destined to be a quiet and uneventful career of meditation and prayer. At heart, however, Louis was not at rest. He was not sure that he was doing God's will. He longed for a life of more hardship and toil.

Spain was at this time in its prime. The fierce and many-centuried conflict with the Moors had ended in the triumph of the Cross and the land was at last free from strife. The warriors of a lifetime, however, could not settle down to the arts of peace. The discovery of America, offering such a vast scope for military prowess, was very opportune, and saved Europe from no one knows. what complications. The great throngs of idle knights flocked to the New World, where glory and wealth sufficient for all awaited them. And certainly the courage of these soldiers was indomitable. Distance, climate, overwhelming odds were all against them, yet in less than half a century they had overrun and conquered a try many times the size of ours. With the men of war went the men of peace. No exploring party ever

coun

set out without a priest. The motive of the presence of God's minister is often misunderstood. It was not greed, nor was it the importunity of the soldiers that made the priests enter on such arduous work. The fierce, unscrupulous adventurers looked on the priests, usually, as enemies. It was only the Emperor's strict orders that made it possible for an ecclesiastic to be with the soldiers. They were there to convert the natives, and to protect them as best they could.

The Order of St. Louis' choice was the most distinguished in this apostolic work. In every land sons of St. Dominic entered with the first venturesome explorers. In all Central America, in the West Indies, in Venezuela, in Colombia, in Peru, in Brazil, in Chili, everywhere where the Europeans first entered one finds names among the Dominicans that are as worthy of perpetual memory as the names of Cortez or Pizarro. It is a glorious page of history, that of the early Dominicans in Spanish-America, and some future Parkman will become famous in editing it. Many were martyred, many succumbed to sickness and fatigue and were buried in the wilderness. Many, wasted with fever, their strength exhausted, old before their time, returned to Spain, to the convents of their early days. Acquaintance with these veterans of Christ's legion had long turned Louis' thoughts to a missionary life, and for years he had prayed that obedience. would send him across the sea. His wish was at last realized, and in 1562 he was ordered to the kingdom of New Granada.

As the Spaniards conquered region. after region of South America, they called them after provinces in the mother country. There was a New Castile, a New Toledo, a New Andalusia, and others with like names. New Granada was what is now approximately the United States of Co

lombia.

The history of the conquest of New Granada is strikingly similar in very many ways to the better-known histories of the conquest of Peru and Mexico. In the first great expedition of Ximenes de Quesada, the chaplain was a Dominican, Dominic de las Casas, a first cousin of the great Bartholomew de las Casas. The cruelties wreaked on the natives were even greater than those in Peru. The native ruler of Peru was put to death without pain, but Quesada first tortured his wretched prey. It was again the lust for gold that made demons of these Christians. The Dominican protested, and sought by every means in his power to bring the invaders to a sense of right, but all to no avail. His only reward, like his brethren in other lands, was to earn the undying hatred of the soldiers, and of their allies, the official historians.

In 1529 there were already twenty Dominicans in Colombia. The horrors of the reign of the soulless Christians became intolerable, and in 1541 a delegation of monks, all Dominicans, from Colombia, Peru and Mexico set out for Spain to inform the Emperor of the sins committed in his name. Charles the Fifth was really astounded, and hearkening to the petitioners drew up a code of thirtynine laws in favor of the Indians. This action of the monks was so noble that even the most bigoted historians praise it. They do not even impugn the motives of these sons of St. Dominic. It is hard for them to be forced to praise an Inquisitor, but in their view. these were humane by exception. Unfortunate men, wilfully blind, these historians cannot see that this noble band was not exceptional. Theirs was but the spirit of their founder, living in his followers, a spirit open and free, that is just to all because it seeks always the warm and living truth.

The party of missionaries that set out with St. Louis numbered thirty. They

sailed from San Lucar on the Bay of Cadiz and had an uneventful voyage across the ocean. Up to that time it was the shortest ever made. What was a short trip in one of the tiny barks of those days would be looked on now as an ocean residence. From port to port took two and three months' travelling.

In

On arriving in the mission field, the recruits were at once given assignments. The savages here were of very low development. The baser passions had run riot among them for generations, with the result that they were all what we would style degenerates. They were cannibals. Their religion was diabolical, and its practices vicious in the extreme. Such were the souls that St. Louis was to labor for and to save. The apparent hopelessness of the task would have appalled an army. St. Louis was singlehanded. It was a real trial for him to be alone, far away from any brother priest, he who was so careful about confession, whose soul so thirsted for the saving showers of the Precious Blood. treating with the savages, not knowing their language, the services of an interpreter were necessary. This left much to be desired, and made the work of conversion very difficult. The saint's assistant was particularly poor, and gave him practically no help whatsoever. So, like his brother monk and fellow townsman, St. Vincent Ferrer, emulous of the favors shown the Apostles, St. Louis prayed God that the gift of tongues be given him. Heaven acceded, and during all his stay among the Indians, he needed only the Spanish language. And the simple Indians wondered much that a stranger just come to them could speak so perfectly their strange dialects.

His success was miraculous. In this respect there has never been such a manifestation of God's power in America. He converted and firmly established in the faith over a hundred thousand natives. Apart from his labors, to live in

the climates where he preached was penance enough. The lowlands of Colombia are in the heart of the tropics. Beneath the fair palms that grace every vista lurk insects and reptiles of every kind. Malarial fever is in the air, for the copious rains and deadly sun nurture it well. Before the days of roads or towns, the missionary's life there from ́a human point of view was surely as dreary and miserable as life well could be. But even with this the religious love of mortification found ways of adding to the hardships. St. Louis literally sought and welcomed the attacking swarms of flies and mosquitoes. He went barefoot through the jungles and swamps. He denied himself food, and went without sleep. No contemplative ever surpassed him in rigid penance, and no shepherd of souls ever gave more time to his work.

The details of his labors are not as abundant as one would like. We have barely more than a brief record of the different places he evangelized. His very first work was to him a bright augury of God's pleasure with his sacrifice. In Tubara, where he was sent on his arrival, he baptized an infant, who died immediately after. To the fine soul. of the man of God it was a blessing of Providence that his first convert became his advocate in heaven.

To keep the new converts from lapsing again into idolatry, or at least into some of its forms, was a difficult task. As with the prophets of the Old Testament, there was one continued struggle to keep the children of the faith from the high-places dedicated to sinful gods. The struggle in Colombia was a rude one, as the simple people were awed by the diabolical arts practised by the pagan priests. There was only one sure means to avert the danger, and this was to destroy all the symbols of the cult. On one occasion he took away by stealth and buried certain bones that

were objects of adoration, thereby stirring up the bitterest anger of the pagans. The Christians were too earnest and strong to permit any open revenge, so the wrathful devotees gave the saint poison in his food. It made him sick unto death. He himself thought he was to die, and amid all his agony grieved that he was dying without the Sacraments. For five days he was in the throes of a terrible fever that caused him awful suffering. At the end of that period the crisis passed and he grew well, though the effects of the ordeal never left him.

The idolatry of these poor, neglected savages was not a thing of convention. It was a real creed that had a firm and deep hold on them. This was brought home to the saint in a cruel way. In one mission he had taught a little boy how to serve Mass. He felt very fondly towards his little brown friend, and named him Luisillo (little Louis). Returning one day from a brief visit to some distant tribes, he was horrified to learn that his altar-boy was dead-killed by his own father as a sacrifice to a fiendish god. The boy's parents, in the absence of the saint, had returned to their abandoned superstition, and seeking to propitiate the insulted god, had offered in expiation their dearest possession. St. Louis knew that his namesake was in heaven, but, yielding to the human sympathy that is not unbecoming even the highest sanctity, like Our Lord on hearing of Lazarus' death, wept bitterly over his loss. He did not sorrow because of Luisillo's death, for the lot of the tiny singer in the martyrs' heavenly choir was precious beyond compare; but absence, the cross of friendship, will wound the heart though. the reason be at peace.

At the time of St. Louis, the missions were highly prosperous. This, let it be remembered, was back in the sixteenth century, before any permanent settlements were even thought of in the