For summer revel or a moonlit masque,
But where in studious cloister Vincent lived
And taught, and, in the simple panoply
Of Catholic tradition armed, struck down
The heretics.
—Faber.
The town of Cannes, to which so many English and Americans resort on account of its delicious climate, its healing air, and the lovely shores where grow the olive and the vine, has, too, its balmy atmosphere for the soul. All the neighboring heights are clothed with the mystic lore of mediæval saint and chapel, the waves of the azure sea still seem to move to the holy impulses that once swept the air, and across the beautiful bay are two fair isles at the entrance—St. Marguerite, associated in most persons’ minds with the prison in which was confined the mysterious Man of the Iron Mask, but once was more happily peopled with
“Virgins good
Who gave their days to heaven”;
and St. Honorat, the Happy Isle (beata illa insula), as it was once called, famous for its ancient monastery, that played so glorious a rôle in the religious history of Gaul. These are the isles of Lérins, two gems of that collar of pearls thrown by God around the Mediterranean Sea, to quote St. Ambrose, where once those who would escape from the perilous charms of the world found refuge.