unhappy creatures, men, women, and children, who were victims of the nomads. Visa states that there were spent weekly 25,000 drachmas on the purchase of vegetables and seasoning, and on cooking the meat, without reckoning what was required for dressing it; while 150 bottles of oil were used daily, and 19 ardebs (36 tons) of lentils. The bread was cooked in four ovens.

Schnoudi, who was so sorry for the unfortunate, and so eager to feed the hungry, treated idolaters and adulterers, on the other hand, with frantic violence. There were in those days, along the banks of the Nile, rich men who lived elegantly in beautiful houses filled with gods, half Greek and half Egyptian. Schnoudi with his monks sacked the dwellings of these worthy pagans. One of them was drowned in the river. It is related that he was drowned by an angel, but it was probably by a monk. Schnoudi was terrible in his zeal. Greatly despising nature, what he could least pardon were the sins of the flesh. Near Athribis there was a priest who lived with a married woman; Schnoudi, shocked by such a scandal, went to the priest, and pointed out the horror of his conduct. The priest promised to leave the woman, but, when he saw her again, kept her with him, for he loved her. Schnoudi unfortunately met them together. "Suffocated by the odour of adultery, he recalled the terrible judgments which the Lord, on Mount Sinai, had directed Moses to execute. With his stick he struck the earth, which thereupon opened, and the offending couple were swallowed up alive."

So says the holy Visa, As a matter of fact, Schnoudi committed a horrible murder.

In spite of the progress of monachism, there were still to be found in Egypt a great number of men, and even priests, who "loved God's creatures. They proceeded to the Duke of Antinoë and charged the Abbot of Athribis with the murder of a man and a woman. The Duke dealt justice. He had Schnoudi seized, tried, and condemned him to death. It is told that two angels rescued the saint from under the executioner's sword. It is easier to believe that the monks of Athribis rescued their Abbot from execution. They formed a numerous and disciplined army, against which, in those days of trouble and anarchy, it was difficult for the authorities to contend.

Such are, shortly, the facts as known to-day regarding the life of Schnoudi. M. Amélineau has the twofold merit of having discovered them in the Coptic manuscripts, and in having constructed a continuous story, full of acute interest, which anyone may read. Schnoudi died in his 119th year, on 2nd July, 451. This date is given us as certain, and it must be admitted that the lives of the fathers of the desert afford more than one example of similar longevity.

"After him," says M. Amélineau, "darkness falls on the history of Schnoudi's monastery, which for a brief space enjoyed such celebrity: not a single one of Visa's successors is known. The work was condemned to perish: only the monastery remains standing, but how shorn of its ancient splendour! Where once trod the feet of so many saints, even the feet of the Lord Himself, the impure foot of woman now rests: the last children of Schnoudi married, and thus introduced into the Sanctuary of God an abomination of desolation"

unimagined even by the prophet Daniel. These poor folk live on the mean income of a few feddans, huddled together with their cattle. They have always preserved the recollection of the terrible man whose shade they believe still haunts their home."

He was a great and terrible saint. Christianity in Egypt is coloured with burning hues of which we in our temperate climate have no idea. The blazing fanaticism of Islam was here anticipated. The marabout and the mahdi already existed in the old Christian monks of the Nile Valley.

LÉON HENNIQUE*

HILE the spiritualists were holding their international congress, or rather their first œcumenical council, in the Grand-Orient de France, I was reading a spiritualistic romance recently published by M. Léon Hennique

under the title Un caractère.

M. Hennique has grown up in and formed himself upon Naturalism. He is one of the story-tellers of the Soirées de Médan, and his first books betray the influence of the "human document." But by the ingenious complexity of his style, and a curious acuteness of thought, he is an offshoot rather of the Goncourts than of M. Zola. His vision, like that of the two brothers, is coloured by the past; he loves rock-work and the rococo, and has a morbid taste for the rare and precious. But he is singular and original by reason of a certain gift of fancy, a certain sense of the ideal, something indefinable, but proud and heroic. Those who have seen his Duc d'Enghien played at the Théâtre Libre know that M. Léon Hennique conceals noble emotions under the bristling, twisted envelope of his literary form. The story which I have just read, Un caractère, is certainly an uncommon work. I could say much that is bad of it. I might

* Un caractère, par Léon Hennique, I vol.

complain bitterly of a writer who wants to dazzle me with the perpetual scintillations of a manyfaceted style, and who irritates my nerves by seeking to allow me neither peace nor rest from new sensations of an excessive tenuity.

I might take my revenge for all the spiral phrases with which he has wearied me, and require him to account for the " inanes chimères," "médians soirs," "oculaires galas," and other novelties which in him are far too common. But what good would it do? He has deliberately planned all these tricks of tongue and thought, these violent subtleties. He is wholly absorbed by a mania for the singular and the exquisite. He is an artist, and he loves his distemper. On both knees he worships this thorn-crowned style, more barbarous and more glittering than a Spanish Christ. The faith of an artist should inspire respect "in all lovers of form and of the gods." To sum up, what I blame M. Hennique for is that he spreads beneath our feet, like the Queen of Argos, a too rich carpet of a disturbing splendour. Like the King of old Æschylus, I prefer the grass and my native soil. I do not regard art and the economy of style in the same fashion as M. Hennique. This dissent at least must not make me bitter or unjust. He loves Art in his own way, I in mine. Is this not a good reason why we should agree, and turn our common disdain upon the unhappy people who live in eternal ugliness? When I reflect that at this moment there is being written some Docteur Rameau, some Comtesse Sarah, or some Dernier amour, I feel inclined to cry to M. Léon Hennique: "What! you know the value of words, the cost of style, the greatness of Art, and I quarrel with you because