in Auray that had not been hung with linen sheets; not a rood of ground that was not strewn with flowers and fresh green leaves. Bands of little girls, dressed in blue and white, surrounded the statue of the Madonna, and the crimson banner of the Sacred Heart was borne by tiny boys, with red sashes around their waists and wreaths of red roses on their curly heads, looking absurdly like Bonfigli's flower-crowned angels. One solemn child personated the infant St. John. He wore a scanty goatskin, and no more. A toy lamb, white and woolly, was tucked under his arm, and a slender cross grasped in his baby hand. By his side walked an equally youthful Jeanne d'Arc, attired in a blue spangled skirt and a steel breastplate, with a helmet, a nodding plume, a drawn sword, and a pair of gauzy wings to indicate that approaching beatification which is the ardent desire of every French Catholic.
"Notre mère, la France, est de Jeanne la fille,"
and she is to be congratulated on so blithely forgetting the unfilial nature of her conduct. At every altar benediction was given to the
