who felt and shared the moral sufferings of his hero could talk. It was undoubtedly beautiful and thrilling. It was like hearing a heart beat, like watching a brain throb, feeling one's self face to face with a naked soul in one of its great crises. But was a fashionable lecture-hall the place for such a public confession? Were frivolous, fluttering women of society a fitting audience in such an hour? Were these ladies of the ballet painted on the walls, this theatrical curtain, seemly environment? And was it in his abbé's robe that Victor Charbonnel should have denounced the tyranny of Rome in public? Shortly afterwards the Abbé Charbonnel was excommunicated, which was no more than everybody expected; and though there was not a word he uttered in that remarkable lecture on a remarkable subject with which I did not sympathise, I should have preferred to hear it delivered elsewhere,—in other and more solemn surroundings.
There is one thing that I have always noticed in the Parisian lecturer,—his complete lack of timidity, of want of self-confidence. However dull he may be, however mediocre, however uneloquent,—and he is often one, or all three,—no matter, he is sure of himself. He has chosen to shine as a lecturer, and as a lecturer he will under no circumstance be induced to recognise himself as a failure. This stupendous
