ference by the temporal power. But what is done with priest nowadays who enter upon Borderland wedlock, is not, so far as I can learn, revealed to the general public. From a French physician, however, I learn of a custom among the Continental priests concerning their sleeping arrangements which suggest that more allowance is made nowadays than formerly for those who Heaven has thus singled out, and that the Church bows to the will of Heaven in this matter, and lays no blame upon the priest.
Theophile Gautier has written a novelette called Clarimonde, which recounts the love of a beautiful vampire for a priest. She comes to him each night and they mount a horse and gallop away to her palace, when he returns at daybreak for his priesthood duties. The author represents the priest as struggling between his duties as a priest and what he considers the allurements of sin: and in consonance with the idea, that punishment is visited upon the sinner. Gautier reveals her as a vampire sucking the blood of her lover while he sleeps.
It would seem as though the author, especially for a priest of God, were catering to the popular superstition that it is sinful to enjoy sensuous love. But if any one in the world is entitled to the joys of true Borderland wedlock, it is surely a priest who has kept his vows of asceticism, and who is really pure-minded. If any one in the world needs it, it is surely the priest who is supposed to stand midway as a bridge-builder, between earthly sinners and celestial beings of the unseen world beyond the grave, since it is pretty generally acknowledged that well ordered sex life is necesary to the development of a symmetrical character. For what mean the words "holy" and "holiness"? They mean "whole-ly," "wholeness." The man and woman who expects to be indeed "holy," must be "whole," i. e., symmetrical. In old Testament times, Jehovah forbade any priest who was a eunuch to minister before Him, thus recognizing the importance of sex in the perfect man. The Rev. Arthur Devine, Passionist, in a book entitled: "Convent Life, or the Duties of Sisters Dedicated in Religion to the Service of God" a book which the title page shows is
