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CONSECRATED TO CRIME
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what trouble she has given, and in what an invidious, not to say churlish spirit she has contradicted the most masterly historians. It is best to ignore her altogether, and to tell our stories without any reference to her signature.

So thought the sensible young woman who led us captive through the collegiate church at Loches, and who insisted upon our descending into the crypt, at one time connected with the fortress by a subterranean gallery. Its dim walls are decorated here and there with mural paintings, rude and half effaced. She pointed out the shadowy outline of a saint in cope and mitre, his stiff forefinger raised in benediction. "That," she said with startling composure, "is the bishop who was the confessor of Louis the Eleventh. The king had him buried alive in this chapel, so that he might not betray the secrets of his confession."

"And did the king have him painted on the wall afterwards, to commemorate the circumstance?" asked the scoffer of the party, at whom others gazed reproachfully, while I wondered how the story of Saint John of Nepomuk had travelled so far afield, and why it had