character and purpose, and precise in style, they give evidence of the latent tendencies, the personal coloring, which became the distinguishing force of his later work. In 1827 he was appointed "Maître de Conférences" at the École Normale; and in 1831 he wrote an 'Introduction to Universal History,' in which his literary originality appears still more marked, and his confidence in his own erudition assured.

The revolution of 1830, by putting in power his old professors, Guizot and Villemain, secured him the position of "Chef de la Section Historiques aux Archives"; and he became Guizot's deputy in the professorship of history in the University. He also obtained a chair of history in the Collège de France, from which he delivered a course of lectures, attended by all the students of the day. It was from this chair that he also gained popular acclamation by his attack upon ecclesiasticism and the Jesuits, denouncing the latter for their intrigues and encroachments. The History of France' had already been begun in 1833. The results of his lectures were published in 1843 as 'Le Prêtre' (The Priest), 'La Femme' (Woman), 'La Famille' (The Family), 'Le Peuple' (The People). By the influence of the clergy, Michelet's course of lectures was suspended, and his career seemed permanently arrested. The revolution of 1848 favored him, and he could have obtained reinstatement in his chair; but he refused to avail himself of the opportunity, having resolved to devote himself thenceforth to his studies and his work. As he has said, his history henceforth became his life; interrupted again and again by other work, but always resumed with increasing ardor and passion. "Augustin Thierry," he said, "called history narrative; Guizot called it analysis: but I call it resurrection." And to quote him again, as his own master authority:-"I had a fine disease that clouded my youth, but one very proper to a historian. I loved death. I lived nine years at the gates of Père la Chaise, and there was my only promenade. Then I lived near La Bièvre, in the midst of great convent gardens; more tombs. I lived a life that the world would have called buried, with no society but the past, my only friends buried people. The gift that St. Louis asked, and did not obtain, I had,— the gift of tears. All those I wept over -peoples and gods-revived

All the criticism that has been written about Michelet is little more than sermons from this text, furnished by himself. In it he himself furnishes all the commentary needed upon his work; it is a résumé of all his talent, and of his faults,- which are only the faults of this talent, as Taine points out. Michelet's exalted sensibility he calls "imagination of the heart." To summarize Taine's conclusions:

"His impressionable imagination is touched by general as well as by particular facts, and he sympathizes with the life of centuries as with the life of

men. He sees the passions of an epoch as clearly as the passions of a man. and paints the Middle Age or the Renaissance with as much vivacity as Philippe le Bel or François I. . . . Every picture or print he sees, every document he reads, touches and impresses his imagination; vividly moved and eloquent himself, he cannot fail to move others. His book, the History,' seizes the mind fast at the first page; in vain you try to resist it, you read to the end. You think of the dialogue where Plato describes the god drawing to himself the soul of the poet, and the soul of the poet drawing to himself the souls of his auditors. Is it possible, where facts and men impress themselves so vividly upon an inflamed imagination, to keep the tone of narration? No, the author ends by believing them real;- he sees them alive, he speaks to them. Michelet's emotions thus become his convictions; history unrolls before him like a vision, and his language rises to Apocalyptic."

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In his first design or vision of the 'History of France,' Michelet saw men and facts not chained to one another, and to past and future, by chains of logical sequence, he saw them as episodes rising in each period to a culminating and dramatic point of interest; and however interrupted his work was, he pursued his original design. Hence his volumes bear the titles of episodes: The Renaissance, The Reformation,' 'Religious Wars,' The League and Henry IV.,' 'Henry IV. and Richelieu,' 'Richelieu and the Fronde,' 'Louis XIV., The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes,' 'Louis XV.,' Louis XV. and Louis XVI.,' 'The French Revolution.' The Renaissance he incarnated in Michel Angelo, the Revolution in Danton. He in fact breathed a human soul into every epoch, period, and event that came under his pen: and "a soul," he says, "weighs infinitely more than a kingdom or an empire; at times, more than the human race." "He wrote as Delacroix painted," Taine says: "risking the crudest coloring; seeking means of expression in the gutter mud itself; borrowing from the language of medicine, and the slang of the vulgar, details and terms which shock and frighten one." His prolific suggestions swarm and multiply over the diseased tissue of a character, in the tainted spot of a heart, until, as in the description of the moral decadence of Louis XV., the imaginative reader shudders and stops reading; for suggestion has suggested what it is unbearable to think.

It is to the perfect happiness of his marriage to a second wife— an incomparable companion-that we owe that series of books whose dithyrambic strains were poured out under the silvery light of a continuous honey-moon, as a biographer expresses it: 'L'Oiseau,’ 'L'Insecte,' 'L'Amour,' 'La Mer,' to which later a fifth, La Montagne,' was added; and which Taine says adds him to the three great poets of France during the century,- De Musset, Lamartine, and Hugo: "for art and genius, his prose is worth their poetry.” The 'Bible of Humanity' and some volumes of collected essays complete the series of his published writings.

In 1870 the Franco-Prussian war called out his 'France before Europe,' a passionate appeal to the common fraternity of all peoples. He was ardently engaged upon a history of the nineteenth century, his last return to his History of France,' when he died in 1874 of heart disease contracted during the Prussian invasion of his country. He lies buried in Père la Chaise, where in youth he used to wander among the dead he loved so well; who, responding to the passionate evocation of his imagination, resumed their being before his mental vision with such vivified reality, that in their turn they evoked from his heart the genius that was henceforth to be his life.

THE

HE end of the sad journey was the Vieux-Marché, the fishmarket. Three scaffolds had been erected. Upon one were the episcopal and royal chairs, and the throne of the cardinal of England amid the seats of his prelates. On the other were to figure the personages of the dismal drama: the preacher, the judges, the bailiff, and lastly the condemned one. Apart was seen a large scaffold of masonry, loaded and overloaded with wood. As to the pyre, there was nothing to complain of: it frightened by its height. This was not merely to make the execution more solemn: there was an intention in it; it was that the pile being built so high, the executioner could only reach the bottom portion to light it, and thus he could not abridge the martyrdom nor expedite the end, as he sometimes did to others, sparing them the flame. Here there was no idea of defrauding justice, or giving a dead body to the fire; they wished her to be well burned, alive, and so that, placed on the summit of this mountain of wood, and dominating the circle of lances and swords. around her, she could be seen from all parts of the place. Slowly burned under the eyes of a curious crowd, there was reason to believe that at the end she would be surprised into some weakness, that something would escape her that might pass as a disavowal; at the least, confused words to be interpreted, low prayers, humiliating cries for mercy, as from a distracted woman.

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The ghastly ceremony began by a sermon. Master Nicolay Midy, one of the lights of the University of Paris, preached on this edifying text: "When a member of the Church is ill, the whole Church is ill." This poor Church could only cure itself by cutting off a member. He concluded by the formula, "Jeanne, go in peace: the Church cannot defend you."

Then the judge of the Church, the bishop of Beauvais, benignly exhorted her to think of her soul, and to recall all her misdeeds in order to excite herself to contrition. The Assertors had judged that it was according to law to read to her her abjuration: the bishop did not do anything of the kind,- he feared her denials, her reclamations. But the poor girl did not dream of thus quibbling for her life: she had far other thoughts. Before they could even exhort her to contrition, she was on her knees invoking God, the Virgin, St. Michael, and St. Catherine; forgiving everybody, and asking forgiveness; saying to the assistants, "Pray for me." She requested each of the priests, particularly, to say a mass for her soul. All this in such a devout fashion, so humble, so touching, that emotion spreading, no one could control himself: the bishop of Beauvais began to weep, he of Boulogne sobbed; and behold the English themselves crying and weeping also-Winchester with the others.

But the judges, who had for a moment lost countenance, recovered and hardened themselves. The bishop of Beauvais, wiping his eyes, began to read the condemnation. He reminded the culprit of her crimes,- schism, idolatry, invocation of demons; how she had been admitted to penitence; and how, seduced by the Prince of Lies, she had fallen again-oh sorrow!-like the dog which returns to his vomit. "Therefore we pronounce you a rotten member, and as such, cut off from the Church. We deliver you over to the secular power, praying it nevertheless to moderate its judgment, by sparing you death and the mutilation of your members."

Thus forsaken by the Church, she committed herself in all confidence to God. She asked for the cross. An Englishman passed to her a cross, which he made of sticks: she received it none the less devoutly; she kissed it, and placed it, this rough cross, beneath her clothes and on her flesh. But she wished to hold the Church's cross before her eyes till death; and the good bailiff Massieu and brother Isambart were so moved by her insistence that they brought her that of the parish church of Saint-Sauveur. As she was embracing this cross and being

couraged by Isambart, the English began to find all this very long: it must be at least midday; the soldiers grumbled, the captains said, "How, priest, will you make us dine here?" Then losing patience, and not awaiting the order of the bailiff, who nevertheless alone had authority to send her to death, they made two soldiers climb up to remove her out of the priests' hands. At the foot of the tribunal she was seized by armed men, who dragged her to the executioner and said to him, "Do your work." This fury of the soldiers caused horror; several of the assistants, even the judges, fled in order not to see more. When she found herself below in the open square amid these Englishmen, who laid hands on her, nature suffered and the flesh was troubled; she cried anew, "O Rouen! you will then be my last dwelling-place." She said no more, and sinned not by her lips even in this moment of terror and trouble; she accused neither her king nor his saints. But, the top of the pile reached, seeing that great city, that immovable and silent crowd, she could not keep from saying, "O Rouen! Rouen! I have a great fear that you will have to suffer for my death!" She who had saved the people and whom the people abandoned, expressed in dying only admirable sweetness of soul, only compassion for them. She was tied beneath the infamous writing, crowned with a mitre, on which was to be read, "Heretic, pervert, apostate, idolater"— and then the executioner lighted the fire. She saw it from above, and uttered a cry. Then, as the brother who was exhorting her paid no attention to the flames, she feared for him; forgetting herself, she made him go down.

Which well proves that up to then she had retracted nothing expressedly; and that the unfortunate Cauchon was obliged, no doubt by the high Satanic will which presided, to come to the foot of the pyre, to front the face of his victim, to try to draw out some word. He only obtained one despairing one. She said to him with sweetness what she had already said: "Bishop, I die by your hand. If you had put me in the Church's prisons this would not have happened." They had doubtless hoped that believing herself abandoned by her king, she would at the last accuse him, say something against him. She still defended him. "Whether I did well or ill, my king had nothing to do with it; it was not he who counseled me."

But the flame rose. At the moment it touched her, the unfortunate one shuddered, and asked for holy water; for water