this untimely hour, were already beginning the uncomforted labours
of their day. The dead in life - there was a chill reflection.

And the words of a French song came back into my memory, telling of
the best of our mixed existence:

'Que t'as de belles filles,
Girofle!

Girofla!
Que t'as de belles filles,

L'AMOUR LET COMPTERA!'
And I blessed God that I was free to wander, free to hope, and free

to love.
THE BOARDERS

BUT there was another side to my residence at Our Lady of the
Snows. At this late season there were not many boarders; and yet I

was not alone in the public part of the monastery. This itself is
hard by the gate, with a small dining-room on the ground-floor and

a whole corridor of cells similar to mine upstairs. I have
stupidly forgotten the board for a regular RETRAITANT; but it was

somewhere between three and five francs a day, and I think most
probably the first. Chance visitors like myself might give what

they chose as a free-will offering, but nothing was demanded. I
may mention that when I was going away, Father Michael refused

twenty francs as excessive. I explained the reasoning which led me
to offer him so much; but even then, from a curious point of

honour, he would not accept it with his own hand. 'I have no right
to refuse for the monastery,' he explained, 'but I should prefer if

you would give it to one of the brothers.'
I had dined alone, because I arrived late; but at supper I found

two other guests. One was a country parishpriest, who had walked
over that morning from the seat of his cure near Mende to enjoy

four days of solitude and prayer. He was a grenadier in person,
with the hale colour and circular wrinkles of a peasant; and as he

complained much of how he had been impeded by his skirts upon the
march, I have a vivid fancy portrait of him, striding along,

upright, big-boned, with kilted cassock, through the bleak hills of
Gevaudan. The other was a short, grizzling, thick-set man, from

forty-five to fifty, dressed in tweed with a knitted spencer, and
the red ribbon of a decoration in his button-hole. This last was a

hard person to classify. He was an old soldier, who had seen
service and risen to the rank of commandant; and he retained some

of the brisk decisive manners of the camp. On the other hand, as
soon as his resignation was accepted, he had come to Our Lady of

the Snows as a boarder, and, after a brief experience of its ways,
had decided to remain as a novice. Already the new life was

beginning to modify his appearance; already he had acquired
somewhat of the quiet and smiling air of the brethren; and he was

as yet neither an officer nor a Trappist, but partook of the
character of each. And certainly here was a man in an interesting

nick of life. Out of the noise of cannon and trumpets, he was in
the act of passing into this still country bordering on the grave,

where men sleep nightly in their grave-clothes, and, like phantoms,
communicate by signs.

At supper we talked politics. I make it my business, when I am in
France, to preach political good-will and moderation, and to dwell

on the example of Poland, much as some alarmists in England dwell
on the example of Carthage. The priest and the commandant assured

me of their sympathy with all I said, and made a heavy sighing over
the bitterness of contemporary feeling.

'Why, you cannot say anything to a man with which he does not
absolutely agree,' said I, 'but he flies up at you in a temper.'

They both declared that such a state of things was antichristian.
While we were thus agreeing, what should my tongue stumble upon but

a word in praise of Gambetta's moderation. The old soldier's
countenance was instantly suffused with blood; with the palms of

his hands he beat the table like a naughty child.
'COMMENT, MONSIEUR?' he shouted. 'COMMENT? Gambetta moderate?

Will you dare to justify these words?'
But the priest had not forgotten the tenor of our talk. And

suddenly, in the height of his fury, the old soldier found a
warning look directed on his face; the absurdity of his behaviour

was brought home to him in a flash; and the storm came to an abrupt
end, without another word.

It was only in the morning, over our coffee (Friday, September
27th), that this couple found out I was a heretic. I suppose I had

misled them by some admiring expressions as to the monastic life
around us; and it was only by a point-blank question that the truth

came out. I had been tolerantly used both by simple Father
Apollinaris and astute Father Michael; and the good Irish deacon,

when he heard of my religious weakness, had only patted me upon the
shoulder and said, 'You must be a Catholic and come to heaven.'

But I was now among a different sect of orthodox. These two men
were bitter and upright and narrow, like the worst of Scotsmen, and

indeed, upon my heart, I fancy they were worse. The priest snorted
aloud like a battle-horse.

'ET VOUS PRETENDEZ MOURIR DANS CETTE ESPECE DE CROYANCE?' he
demanded; and there is no type used by mortal printers large enough

to qualify his accent.
I humbly indicated that I had no design of changing.

But he could not away with such a monstrous attitude. 'No, no,' he
cried; 'you must change. You have come here, God has led you here,

and you must embrace the opportunity.'
I made a slip in policy; I appealed to the family affections,

though I was speaking to a priest and a soldier, two classes of men
circumstantially divorced from the kind and homely ties of life.

'Your father and mother?' cried the priest. 'Very well; you will
convert them in their turn when you go home.'

I think I see my father's face! I would rather tackle the
Gaetulian lion in his den than embark on such an enterprise against

the family theologian.
But now the hunt was up; priest and soldier were in full cry for my

conversion; and the Work of the Propagation of the Faith, for which
the people of Cheylard subscribed forty-eight francs ten centimes

during 1877, was being gallantly pursued against myself. It was an
odd but most effective proselytising. They never sought to

convince me in argument, where I might have attempted some defence;
but took it for granted that I was both ashamed and terrified at my

position, and urged me solely on the point of time. Now, they
said, when God had led me to Our Lady of the Snows, now was the

appointed hour.
'Do not be withheld by false shame,' observed the priest, for my

encouragement.
For one who feels very similarly to all sects of religion, and who

has never been able, even for a moment, to weigh seriously the
merit of this or that creed on the eternal side of things, however

much he may see to praise or blame upon the secular and temporal
side, the situation thus created was both unfair and painful. I

committed my second fault in tact, and tried to plead that it was
all the same thing in the end, and we were all drawing near by

different sides to the same kind and undiscriminating Friend and
Father. That, as it seems to lay spirits, would be the only gospel

worthy of the name. But different men think differently; and this
revolutionary aspiration brought down the priest with all the

terrors of the law. He launched into harrowing details of hell.
The damned, he said - on the authority of a little book which he

had read not a week before, and which, to add conviction to
conviction, he had fully intended to bring along with him in his

pocket - were to occupy the same attitude through all eternity in
the midst of dismal tortures. And as he thus expatiated, he grew

in nobility of aspect with his enthusiasm.
As a result the pair concluded that I should seek out the Prior,

since the Abbot was from home, and lay my case immediately before
him.

'C'EST MON CONSEIL COMME ANCIEN MILITAIRE,' observed the
commandant; 'ET CELUI DE MONSIEUR COMME PRETRE.'

'OUI,' added the CURE, sententiously nodding; 'COMME ANCIEN
MILITAIRE - ET COMME PRETRE.'

At this moment, whilst I was somewhat embarrassed how to answer, in
came one of the monks, a little brown fellow, as lively as a grig,

and with an Italian accent, who threw himself at once into the