It would be hard to conceive a more lovely portrait of the Christian priest; it is scarcely surpassed by that of Monseigneur Bienvenu in Les Misérables, of whose conduct in the matter of the silver candlesticks we are not a little reminded by the good Sardinian bishop's compassion for the needy rogue. Neither the one nor the other realises an ideal which would win the unconditional approval of the Charity Organisation Society, and we must perhaps admit that humane proclivities which indirectly encourage swindling are more a mischief than an advantage to the State. Yet who can be insensible to the beauty of this unconquerable pity for the evil-doer, this charity that believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things? Who can say how much it has done to make society possible, to keep the world on its wheels? It is the bond that binds together all religions. Six thousand years ago the ancient Egyptian dirge-singers chanted before their dead: "There is no fault in him. No answer riseth up against him. In the truth he liveth, with the truth he nourisheth himself. The gods are satisfied with all he hath done.... He succoured the afflicted, he gave bread to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, he sheltered the outcast, his doors were open to the stranger, he was a father to the fatherless."
The part of France where dirge-singing stayed the longest seems to have been the south-west. The old women of Gascony still preserve the memory of a good many songs, some of which have been fortunately placed on record by M. Bladé in his collection of Gascon folk-lore. The Gascon dirge is a kind of prose recitative made up of distinct exclamations that fall into irregular strophes. Each has a burden of this description:
Ah!
Ah! Ah! Ah!
Ah! Praube!
Ah! Praube!
Moun Diu!
Moun Diu! Moun Diu!
The wife mourns for the loss of "Praube Jan;" when she was a young girl she loved only him. "No, no! I will not have it! I will not have them take thee to the graveyard!" "What will become of us?" asks the daughter; "my poor mother is infirm, my brothers and sisters are too small; there is only me to rule the house." The mother bewails her boy: "Poor little one! I loved thee so much, thou wert so pretty, thou wert so good. Thou didst work so well; all I bid thee do, thou didst; all I told thee, didst thou believe; thou wert very young, yet already didst thou earn thy bread. Poor little one, thou art dead; they carry thee to the grave, with the cross going before. They put thee into the earth.... Poor little one, I shall see thee no more; never! never! never! Thou goest and I stay. My God! thou wilt be very lonely in the graveyard this night; and I, I shall weep at home."