live with the creature nor do without her, and falls into a mortal apathy. The android exactly resembles this woman in feature, but the thoughts which she expresses (due to an internal phonograph) are of an ideal beauty, having been composed by the finest writers of the two hemispheres. They produce the deepest impression upon the young peer.

"At your cry of despair," says the android, "I have clothed myself in all haste with the radiant outlines of your desire, in order to appear to you....

"I formed myself in the mind of my creator, so that, thinking that he was acting of his own volition, he confusedly obeyed me."

"Who am I? A creature of dreams, who half awakes in your thoughts.

"Oh, do not awake and leave me.

"Who am I? For you, at least, my existence here depends on your free will. Grant me life, affirm that I exist! Strengthen me with yourself! Then I shall be instantaneously animated, in your eyes, with that degree of reality with which your creative will has endowed me. As a woman I shall be no more for you than what you believe me to be." As the astonished peer makes no answer, the android resumes:

"Do you fear to interrupt me? Be careful! You forget that it is only in you that I thrill with life or lie inanimate, and that such fears may be fatal to me. If you doubt my existence I am lost, which also means that you lose in me the ideal creature for whom it was enough that you called her to you.

"With what a marvellous life may I be endowed if you are simple enough to believe in me, and to defy reason!"

After all, is not the android right? Does she lie more than others? Is she a greater illusion? For all that one knows of the woman one loves, for all that one possesses of her secret, for all the distance one can penetrate into her soul, the automaton is really as good as the living woman. Terrible is the wisdom of the android! Never have Nature and Love been so magnificently reviled. Do you not feel chilled, as I was? Alas, poor Villiers! "I knew him he was a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy."

AN EGYPTIAN MONK*

M

E. AMÉLINEAU has passed several years in Egypt, searching for Coptic manuscripts hidden in the churches and monasteries. This scholar, who was full of faith, and still retains at the bottom of his heart the perfume of his vanished beliefs, has lived long hours in the monasteries of the Nile, amid the dirty, lazy, ignorant, degraded and happy monks. With sympathetic pity he has watched them sunning their proud and pensive lethargy. He has studied their soul, which is both coarse and subtle, and full of marvellous visions. One thing struck him: the profound resemblance between the Coptic and the Celtic race. On either side there is the same artless idealism, and the same worship of old tradition. M. Amélineau has collected the monuments of a history of Christian Egypt. He has published several texts of great importance. To-day I shall refer only to one of his works, the Life of Schnoudi. It is an interesting book, written with a graceful touch and easy to read.

Schnoudi, whose biography M. Amélineau has written with the aid of historical documents, such as monastic rules, letters of administration, sermons, decrees, etc., was an extraordinary individual, worthy

* "Les Moines égyptiens," par E. Amélineau. Vie de Schnoudi (Leroux édit., in-18).

to be studied alongside of Antonius, Macarius, and Pacomus, who endowed Egyptian Christianity with such original features.

He was born on May 2nd, A.D. 333, under the patriarchate of Athanasius, not far from the Greek town of Athribis, then in ruins, at Schenaloli; which means "The Village of the Vine." His father was called Abgous and his mother Darouba. They were simple fellaheen, who owned a few sheep, and perhaps a little of the black soil, which returns a hundred-fold the grain entrusted to it. They gave the predestinate child the name of Schnoudi: that is, Son of God. Schnoudi was brought up like all the children of the fellaheen. One can see him, agile and naked, following his mother to the bank of the river when she went in the evening to fill her jar, which she carried erect on her head, in accordance with age-long and still existing custom. When he was nine he accompanied the old shepherd who grazed his father's sheep. His vocation was already revealing itself. In the evening, instead of returning home, he would go down into one of the numberless canals which cross the fields, and there, plunged in water up to his neck, under a sycamore tree, he would pray all night with uplifted arms. In the East it is by such practices as these that holiness is made manifest. Darouba had a brother named Bgoul, who was abbot of a monastery near the ruined town of Athribis. Bgoul took the child and had him trained in the school dependent upon the monastery. Schnoudi there learnt to speak and to write Coptic.

He then learnt a little Greek. He worked especially at tracing characters on innumerable potsherds. The art of the scribe was then held in high regard.

Above all, he studied the Bible, and nourished himself on the psalms and the prophets.

Reaching man's age, he manifested his holiness by works worthy of Macarius and Pacomus. He slept but little, fasted till sundown, and ate only a little bread and salt with water. He would sometimes pass the whole week, from Saturday to Saturday, without food. During the forty days of Lent he was satisfied with boiled beans.

Once, in Holy Week, on Good Friday, he made himself a cross like that of Jesus, raised it, attached himself to the wood, and remained hanging, with outstretched arms, with his face and chest against his tree of punishment. He remained thus for a whole week. It is well known that in our time Père Lacordaire has revived these mystic tortures, and placed himself on the cross for several hours.

Schnoudi was subject to fits of weeping; so abundantly would he weep that it was feared that he might lose his eyesight. Following the custom of the Egyptian Saints he retired into the desert, and for five years lived in one of those ancient tombs which form vast chambers hewn out of the rock, with walls often covered with paintings. There he worked with his hands.

One day, says his biographer, as he was seated in the sepulchral chamber plaiting ropes, the Tempter appeared before him in the form of a man of God.

"Greeting, O beautiful youth," he said; "the Lord has sent me to console you. Henceforth you shall renounce works of piety and quit the stony desert; go back to the laughing country-side, and eat your bread in company with your brothers." Hearing these words, Schnoudi knew who stood before him. He answered: "If you are come to