customs and domestic festivals. The family will always be the basis of

human society. Law and authority are first felt there; there, at any
rate, the habit of obedience should be learned. Viewed in the light of

all their consequences, the spirit of the family and paternal
authority are two elements but little developed as yet in our new

legislative system. Yet in the family, the commune, the department,
lies the whole of our country. The laws ought therefore to be based on

these three great divisions.
"In my opinion, marriages, the birth of infants, and the deaths of

heads of households cannot be surrounded with too much circumstance.
The secret of the strength of Catholicism, and of the deep root that

it has taken in the ordinary life of man, lies precisely in this--that
it steps in to invest every important event in his existence with a

pomp that is so naively touching, and so grand, whenever the priest
rises to the height of his mission and brings his office into harmony

with the sublimity of Christian doctrine.
"Once I looked upon the Catholic religion as a cleverly exploited mass

of prejudices and superstitions, which an intelligent civilization
ought to deal with according to its desserts. Here I have discovered

its political necessity and its usefulness as a moral agent; here,
moreover, I have come to understand its power, through a knowledge of

the actual thing which the word expresses. Religion means a bond or
tie, and certainly a cult--or, in other words, the outward and visible

form of religion is the only force that can bind the various elements
of society together and mould them into a permanent form. Lastly, it

was also here that I have felt the soothing influence that religion
sheds over the wounds of humanity, and (without going further into the

subject) I have seen how admirably it is suited to the fervid
temperaments of southern races.

"Let us take the road up the hillside," said the doctor, interrupting
himself; "we must reach the plateau up there. Thence we shall look

down upon both valleys, and you will see a magnificent view. The
plateau lies three thousand feet above the level of the Mediterranean;

we shall see over Savoy and Dauphine, and the mountain ranges of the
Lyonnais and Rhone. We shall be in another commune, a hill commune,

and on a farm belonging to M. Gravier you will see the kind of scene
of which I have spoken. There the great events of life are invested

with a solemnity which comes up to my ideas. Mourning for the dead is
vigorously prescribed. Poor people will beg in order to purchase black

clothing, and no one refuses to give in such a case. There are few
days in which the widow does not mention her loss; she always speaks

of it with tears, and her grief is as deep after ten days of sorrow as
on the morning after her bereavement. Manners are patriarchal: the

father's authority is unlimited, his word is law. He takes his meals
sitting by himself at the head of the table; his wife and children

wait upon him, and those about him never address him without using
certain respectful forms of speech, while every one remains standing

and uncovered in his presence. Men brought up in this atmosphere are
conscious of their dignity; to my way of thinking, it is a noble

education to be brought up among these customs. And, for the most
part, they are upright, thrifty, and hardworking people in this

commune. The father of every family, when he is old and past work,
divides his property equally among his children, and they support him;

that is the usual way here. An old man of ninety, in the last century,
who had divided everything he had among his four children, went to

live with each in turn for three months in the year. As he left the
oldest to go to the home of a younger brother, one of his friends

asked him, 'Well, are you satisfied with the arrangement?' 'Faith!
yes,' the old man answered; 'they have treated me as if I had been

their own child.' That answer of his seemed so remarkable to an
officer then stationed at Grenoble, that he repeated it in more than

one Parisian salon. That officer was the celebrated moralist
Vauvenargues, and in this way the beautiful saying came to the

knowledge of another writer named Chamfort. Ah! still more forcible
phrases are often struck out among us, but they lack a historian

worthy of them."
"I have come across Moravians and Lollards in Bohemia and Hungary,"

said Genestas. "They are a kind of people something like your
mountaineers, good folk who endure the sufferings of war with angelic

patience."
"Men living under simple and natural conditions are bound to be almost

alike in all countries. Sincerity of life takes but one form. It is
true that a country life often extinguishes thought of a wider kind;

but evil propensities are weakened and good qualities are developed by
it. In fact, the fewer the numbers of the human beings collected

together in a place, the less crime, evil thinking, and general bad
behavior will be found in it. A pure atmosphere counts for a good deal

in purity of morals."
The two horsemen, who had been climbing the stony road at a foot pace,

now reached the level space of which Benassis had spoken. It is a
strip of land lying round about the base of a lofty mountain peak, a

bare surface of rock with no growth of any kind upon it; deep clefts
are riven in its sheer inaccessible sides. The gray crest of the

summit towers above the ledge of fertile soil which lies around it, a
domain sometimes narrower, sometimes wider, and altogether about a

hundred acres in extent. Here, through a vast break in the line of the
hills to the south, the eye sees French Maurienne, Dauphine, the crags

of Savoy, and the far-off mountains of the Lyonnais. Genestas was
gazing from this point, over a land that lay far and wide in the

spring sunlight, when there arose the sound of a wailing cry.
"Let us go on," said Benassis; "the wail for the dead has begun, that

is the name they give to this part of the funeral rites."
On the western slope of the mountain peak, the commandant saw the

buildings belonging to a farm of some size. The whole place formed a
perfect square. The gateway consisted of a granite arch, impressive in

its solidity, which added to the old-world appearance of the buildings
with the ancient trees that stood about them, and the growth of plant

life on the roofs. The house itself lay at the farther end of the
yard. Barns, sheepfolds, stables, cowsheds, and other buildings lay on

either side, and in the midst was the great pool where the manure had
been laid to rot. On a thriving farm, such a yard as this is usually

full of life and movement, but to-day it was silent and deserted. The
poultry was shut up, the cattle were all in the byres, there was

scarcely a sound of animal life. Both stables and cowsheds had been
carefully swept across the yard. The perfect neatness which reigned in

a place where everything as a rule was in disorder, the absence of
stirring life, the stillness in so noisy a spot, the calm serenity of

the hills, the deep shadow cast by the towering peak--everything
combined to make a strong impression on the mind.

Genestas was accustomed to painful scenes, yet he could not help
shuddering as he saw a dozen men and women standingweeping outside

the door of the great hall. "THE MASTER IS DEAD!" they wailed; the
unison of voices gave appalling effect to the words which they

repeated twice during the time required to cross the space between the
gateway and the farmhouse door. To this wailing lament succeeded moans

from within the house; the sound of a woman's voice came through the
casements.

"I dare not intrude upon such grief as this," said Genestas to
Benassis.

"I always go to visit a bereaved family," the doctor answered, "either
to certify the death, or to see that no mischance caused by grief has

befallen the living. You need not hesitate to come with me. The scene
is impressive, and there will be such a great many people that no one

will notice your presence."
As Genestas followed the doctor, he found, in fact, that the first

room was full of relations of the dead. They passed through the crowd
and stationed themselves at the door of a bedroom that opened out of

the great hall which served the whole family for a kitchen and a
sitting-room; the whole colony, it should rather be called, for the

great length of the table showed that some forty people lived in the
house. Benassis' arrival interrupted the discourse of a tall, simply-