terror was chimerical, they went out of my mind by enchantment, and

I knew no more than the man in the moon about my only occupation.
At Creil, where we stopped to lunch, we left the canoes in another

floating lavatory, which, as it was high noon, was packed with
washerwomen, red-handed and loud-voiced; and they and their broad

jokes are about all I remember of the place. I could look up my
history-books, if you were very anxious, and tell you a date or

two; for it figured rather largely in the English wars. But I
prefer to mention a girls' boarding-school, which had an interest

for us because it was a girls' boarding-school, and because we
imagined we had rather an interest for it. At least - there were

the girls about the garden; and here were we on the river; and
there was more than one handkerchief waved as we went by. It

caused quite a stir in my heart; and yet how we should have wearied
and despised each other, these girls and I, if we had been

introduced at a croquet-party! But this is a fashion I love: to
kiss the hand or wave a handkerchief to people I shall never see

again, to play with possibility, and knock in a peg for fancy to
hang upon. It gives the traveller a jog, reminds him that he is

not a traveller everywhere, and that his journey is no more than a
siesta by the way on the real march of life.

The church at Creil was a nondescript place in the inside, splashed
with gaudy lights from the windows, and picked out with medallions

of the Dolorous Way. But there was one oddity, in the way of an EX
VOTO, which pleased me hugely: a faithful model of a canal boat,

swung from the vault, with a written aspiration that God should
conduct the SAINT NICOLAS of Creil to a good haven. The thing was

neatly executed, and would have made the delight of a party of boys
on the water-side. But what tickled me was the gravity of the

peril to be conjured. You might hang up the model of a sea-going
ship, and welcome: one that is to plough a furrow round the world,

and visit the tropic or the frosty poles, runs dangers that are
well worth a candle and a mass. But the SAINT NICOLAS of Creil,

which was to be tugged for some ten years by patient draught-
horses, in a weedy canal, with the poplars chattering overhead, and

the skipper whistling at the tiller; which was to do all its
errands in green inland places, and never get out of sight of a

village belfry in all its cruising; why, you would have thought if
anything could be done without the intervention of Providence, it

would be that! But perhaps the skipper was a humorist: or perhaps
a prophet, reminding people of the seriousness of life by this

preposterous token.
At Creil, as at Noyon, Saint Joseph seemed a favourite saint on the

score of punctuality. Day and hour can be specified; and grateful
people do not fail to specify them on a votive tablet, when prayers

have been punctually and neatly answered. Whenever time is a
consideration, Saint Joseph is the proper intermediary. I took a

sort of pleasure in observing the vogue he had in France, for the
good man plays a very small part in my religion at home. Yet I

could not help fearing that, where the Saint is so much commanded
for exactitude, he will be expected to be very grateful for his

tablet.
This is foolishness to us Protestants; and not of great importance

anyway. Whether people's gratitude for the good gifts that come to
them be wisely conceived or dutifully expressed, is a secondary

matter, after all, so long as they feel gratitude. The true
ignorance is when a man does not know that he has received a good

gift, or begins to imagine that he has got it for himself. The
self-made man is the funniest windbag after all! There is a marked

difference between decreeing light in chaos, and lighting the gas
in a metropolitan back-parlour with a box of patent matches; and do

what we will, there is always something made to our hand, if it
were only our fingers.

But there was something worse than foolishness placarded in Creil
Church. The Association of the Living Rosary (of which I had never

previously heard) is responsible for that. This Association was
founded, according to the printed advertisement, by a brief of Pope

Gregory Sixteenth, on the 17th of January 1832: according to a
coloured bas-relief, it seems to have been founded, sometime other,

by the Virgin giving one rosary to Saint Dominic, and the Infant
Saviour giving another to Saint Catharine of Siena. Pope Gregory

is not so imposing, but he is nearer hand. I could not distinctly
make out whether the Association was entirely devotional, or had an

eye to good works; at least it is highly organised: the names of
fourteen matrons and misses were filled in for each week of the

month as associates, with one other, generally a married woman, at
the top for ZELATRICE: the leader of the band. Indulgences,

plenary and partial, follow on the performance of the duties of the
Association. 'The partialindulgences are attached to the

recitation of the rosary.' On 'the recitation of the required
DIZAINE,' a partialindulgencepromptly follows. When people serve

the kingdom of heaven with a pass-book in their hands, I should
always be afraid lest they should carry the same commercial spirit

into their dealings with their fellow-men, which would make a sad
and sordid business of this life.

There is one more article, however, of happier import. 'All these
indulgences,' it appeared, 'are applicable to souls in purgatory.'

For God's sake, ye ladies of Creil, apply them all to the souls in
purgatory without delay! Burns would take no hire for his last

songs, preferring to serve his country out of unmixed love.
Suppose you were to imitate the exciseman, mesdames, and even if

the souls in purgatory were not greatly bettered, some souls in
Creil upon the Oise would find themselves none the worse either

here or hereafter.
I cannot help wondering, as I transcribe these notes, whether a

Protestant born and bred is in a fit state to understand these
signs, and do them what justice they deserve; and I cannot help

answering that he is not. They cannot look so merely ugly and mean
to the faithful as they do to me. I see that as clearly as a

proposition in Euclid. For these believers are neither weak nor
wicked. They can put up their tablet commanding Saint Joseph for

his despatch, as if he were still a village carpenter; they can
'recite the required DIZAINE,' and metaphorically pocket the

indulgence, as if they had done a job for Heaven; and then they can
go out and look down unabashed upon this wonderful river flowing

by, and up without confusion at the pin-point stars, which are
themselves great worlds full of flowing rivers greater than the

Oise. I see it as plainly, I say, as a proposition in Euclid, that
my Protestant mind has missed the point, and that there goes with

these deformities some higher and more religious spirit than I
dream.

I wonder if other people would make the same allowances for me!
Like the ladies of Creil, having recited my rosary of toleration, I

look for my indulgence on the spot.
PRECY AND THE MARIONNETTES

WE made Precy about sundown. The plain is rich with tufts of
poplar. In a wide, luminous curve, the Oise lay under the

hillside. A faint mist began to rise and confound the different
distances together. There was not a sound audible but that of the

sheep-bells in some meadows by the river, and the creaking of a
cart down the long road that descends the hill. The villas in

their gardens, the shops along the street, all seemed to have been
deserted the day before; and I felt inclined to walk discreetly as

one feels in a silent forest. All of a sudden, we came round a
corner, and there, in a little green round the church, was a bevy

of girls in Parisian costumes playing croquet. Their laughter, and
the hollow sound of ball and mallet, made a cheery stir in the

neighbourhood; and the look of these slim figures, all corseted and
ribboned, produced an answerable disturbance in our hearts. We

were within sniff of Paris, it seemed. And here were females of
our own species playing croquet, just as if Precy had been a place

in real life, instead of a stage in the fairyland of travel. For,
to be frank, the peasant woman is scarcely to be counted as a woman