_Thursday, July 27._--M. des Billiers came to go with me to M. Hervé, the surgeon of Les Sœurs de la Charité, to get his account of the material facts attending the healing of the novice on the 9th of May. We found him out, but Mad. Hervé gave the same account as we had before received; and told us if we would call later we could see M. Hervé. I did so, and he then said that he had deposited a medical account of the whole thing with the Sisters, which I might see in the Rue du Bac.
I went again to call on M. Noirlieu, but found him out. On the way went into the old abbey church of S. Germain des Prés: since I was last there the whole choir has been painted. I think this is the most pleasing and impressive of all the churches at Paris. I could not be there without emotion, considering the long line of Benedictines who had worshipped within those walls, and deserved so well of the Church of Christ by studying and editing her great Fathers. I saw commemorated in one monument three great names--Mabillon, Descartes, and Montfaucon; of the second, I think it was said, "qui luce, quam indagavit, nunc fruitur:" this comprehends everything,--to enjoy that light. O utinam!
I have been looking to-day at a short account published here: "Sur les soixante-dix serviteurs mis à mort pour la foi en Chine, en Tong-King, et en Cochin-Chine, déclarés vénérables par notre S. Père le Pape Gregoire XVI." It is a wonderful history: the deeds and sufferings of the early Church exactly reproduced in our own times. These martyrs were even more savagely tortured than those of old by the Romans. And some of them are only four or five years older than oneself, some of them natives of China, younger; so that while I have wasted my days in vanity, others, sharers of this same flesh and blood, have entered the noble army of martyrs. And if charity dispenses the place of the redeemed in the mansions on high, near to their Lord assuredly will be their place, who passed from the midst of a deceiving and voluptuous civilisation, unstained and unallured, into the midst of a population lying in the valley of the shadow of death; low, grovelling, filthy in mind and body, and this to save some souls, if it might be, out of that otherwise condemned mass. It would seem as if out of corruption at its worst degree the highest, purest, and most self-denying charity were to go forth, to show that God's arm is not shortened, and that we might be, if we would, all that the martyrs of old were. Moreover, the people of Cochin China are naturally of a peculiarly timid disposition; yet many have been found to emulate the courage of European priests and bishops, in bearing the most prolonged torments and trials. What a horrible thing does it seem, that we should be practically taught, that the system which produces these men is such a corruption of God's revelation as is but a step removed, if removed at all, from idolatry.