"Look after your bodies; leave your souls to me.

I hold their cure--guide their course: I guarantee their final fate." A bargain, in which every true Catholic deems himself a gainer.

Lucifer just offers the same terms: "All this power will I give thee, and the glory of it; for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will I give it.

If thou, therefore, wilt worship me, all shall be thine!" About this time--in the ripest glow of summer--Madame Beck's house became as merry a place as a school could well be.

All day long the broad folding-doors and the two-leaved casements stood wide open: settled sunshine seemed naturalized in the atmosphere; clouds were far off, sailing away beyond sea, resting, no doubt, round islands such as England--that dear land of mists--but withdrawn wholly from the drier continent.