bottling-cellar, is antagonistic house which backs on to Pota to the appointed village curé. The mad priest is a strangelooking figure he is tall, and there is more than a hint of the Beethoven mask in his emphatic face. He goes dressed in the tattered remnants of priestly costume; his hat has the texture and colour of drowned kittens; his soutaine hangs to a ragged edge; it is rent, repaired in some places with clumsy stitchings of string, in other places with pieces of sacking, while through unmended gaps in what must be his only covering, one has glimpses of his flesh, to the scandal of the good wives of N. Much learning hath made him mad, but the villagers date his actual lapse from two incidents: the first, an appointment to give a discourse at Rome; the second, a present of an elaborately worked quilt from a nun in the convent. Probably the first made him realise that he was ambitious; the secondthe quilt was, we have heard, a marvellous piece of workshowed him the treacheries of sex. At any rate, from that day he has renounced ambition, has renounced even comfort-his only relaxation an asthmatic accordion, and he will look no woman in the face. He lives on produce of his own garnering. Every day sees him setting out with wheelbarrow and hoe, or toiling back bowed under a sack of potatoes or of beans or a load of brushwood. He owns the to's beer-shed, but lives in the attic. He has rich relatives, who used to send him presents chickens, ducks, rabbits, and so on,-which he always laid on his doorstep for the first passer-by to take away. His madness has practically turned him to an austerity which, in fact, seems very like Christianity. Fifteen hundred years ago he would have been revered; to-day he is a mark for the poked fingers of mingled admiration, pity, and ridicule. His madness-but is he mad? They call him mad, because in his life he seems to deny the value of everything which is generally counted as valuable; but then half the saints in the catalogue were twice as mad as he-Stylites and Anthony and all those old meditative Christians who retreated from Alexandria to caves upon the desert's edge. A million hermitages in a hundred lands attest a similar piety which once was venerated. Tiens," they say nowadays, "Il est fou ce prêtre la; et vous savez - montrez la cuisse aux dames, ça n'est pas chic." Yet that old-time asceticism has its disadvantages in modern life. It is disturbing to reflect that Charlemagne was not immaculate, and that Sappho scratched her head for reasons other than a halting verse. Our modern saint has a similar drawback, and has been interdicted from officiating at Mass in the N- Church for reasons purely hygienic. Nowadays most people would amend the three Christian virtues into Faith, Soap, and Charity, and the greatest of these is Soap." The banishment of this priest from the altar may nevertheless be as much a mark of jealousy as of outraged cleanliness. The village curé has naturally followed the normality of mankind: his fees have risen with the falling franc. But our hermit still clings to the former prices; he is, in fact, a blackleg in more senses than one. That trade union, the Church, would like to boycott him. But the peasant who does not desert his economical habit even on the brim of death is satisfied, if not eager, to get to heaven as cheaply as possible; he would buy his extreme unction at bargain prices. Thus our hermit is in some demand by sick-beds, to the detriment of the cure's pocket. And so we come back to the peasant's accusation, that the modern curé is at best a tradesman, a would-be monopolist. The villagers are willing to be taxed for the policeman who keeps their social manners in order, but are reluctant to pay priestly taxes: heaven is such a speculative affair to a man in health. Undoubtedly the cures are often tradesmen; often they are bigoted, which gives them the air of tradesmen. Most are men of little birth, peasant sons striving for a cheaply won importance, or orphans brought up by the nuns in the shadow of the cloister, educated on While writing the above it occurred to me to check our observations by a direct reference. Valentine, our charwoman, was polishing the parquet floor, so I asked her "Valentine, are you Parisienne?" Valentine. "No, monsieur. I come from the country. Not far from Paris, it is true, still from the country." Myself. "What do they say of the curés in your parts ? Valentine (making a face and shrugging her shoulders). "Ah well, monsieur, one is devout in my country. I am not devout; but in general yes." Myself. "All parts are not alike?" Valentine (with an expressive flourish of the hand down her not very ornate person). “Ah well, monsieur, in the country one is devout, forcedly. After all, the Church, you know... it is the sole method of showing off one's dresses. There's the 14th of July, the people's feast, but otherwise-well, one doesn't ordinarily dress, not in the country; and so one is devout. One goes to Mass-to show oneself-what? Of course, one isn't exactly dévot, pas si dévot que çà. Mais. In Paris, for example, one doesn't need such occasions for dressing up. Myself. "And the men? Valentine. "Well yes, the men are devout too. They go to Mass, and then they go to the buvette to drink a glass or two, and its odds on that they don't come home to lunch. Oh yes, they are dévot, pareillement." Socially the curé-bachelor, cut off in his little vicarage, seeking refuge from life in books or in the monotone of his breviary-is at a disadvantage. He is more or less out of touch with a full half of his parishioners' intimate interests. Educationally, compelled Myself. "And what do they to enforce dogmas of the middle think of the curés ? " She said no more, but her thoughts were working so furiously within her that the parquet in that square yard shines more vividly than in any other. ages in a civilisation of mater Oh, the ialism, he is out of fashion. Benevolently, the chief paths for touching the peasants are taken over from him by the nuns, who are the visitors, the condolers, the sick nurses; and these nuns, by their very constitution, are separated from the curés, and absorb the gratitude, the sympathy, and the spare humanity of the villagers and farm people. All the varied interests, feminine and humane, which in an English village the clergyman's wife concentrates into the family are here by the nuns dispersed away from the clergy. Our concierge, on the other hand, says that in her district, the French Pyrenees, the people are really devout. She adds, "No man in the village would dare to stay away from Mass." The cook of our little bistro restaurant also assures us that the people of her district are very devout, and the priests are excellent men. That is the Cantal. However, we have found out that her cousin is a priest, so perhaps we may discount her evidence as prejudiced. The truth seems to be that France varies in different districts. One must be wary of generalising from a single source. Also the curé suffers because of his celibacy. As soon as the Church ceases to be an autocracy, it must become a cour tier. It must gain its authority in as many diverse ways as possible. It must act socially, educationally, benevolently, and politically. It may be noted that we have almost neglected the religious aspect of the Church; the fact seems to be that religious in the Christian sense the peasant is not, nor perhaps has been remarkably anywhere, except in Slavonic lands. The worship of the countryside is still essentially pagan; it is part compounded of magic and of devil - worship. The man who builds a fortress confesses himself afraid, so the peasant in worshipping is often confessing to a terror of the devil. Christianity is not two thousand years old; has it yet But the devil-worshipping aspect of Christianity is losing its force. Whether it is giving place to a real religion may be a question. We were in Nwhen the curé set out in full canonicals to bless the animals of the village. In our little triangular place was a healthy community of beasts: the Sestrols had two dogs, one cat, thirteen ducks, and a horse; at Tuk-Tuk's were the sausagelike pigs, a dozen hens, five rabbits, six little ducks, and Cora the pup; the baker owned two pigs; Lemoule and the cooper had five ducks, a pig, a hen with eight chickens, Oursa the dog, and a donkey; in the stables, which formed one side of the place, were two draught oxen and a few chickens. The priest arrived with some ceremony, an acolyte bearing the mortar full of holy water, and the pestle with which to scatter the holy drops. But of all the menagerie, only two pigs were mustered to benefit by the consecrated dew. The fear of the devil being departed from N-, gone was any enthusiasm for blessed meat -unhallowed animals went into the N-stewpans and greasepots this year. In the rest of the village things were little better, only one pig in the steep street which owned dozens. In the Place de Grifoultres, standing between the tall ancient ironwork cross and the new marble monument de guerre, the curé made vague gestures at large with the aspergoire, which gathered in but two pigs and one sheep, and a cat, which was there by accident. X. DOCTOR SAGGEBOU. The instinctive credence in magic and a half-hidden fear of the devil, which are visible in the peasant's religion, pursue him naturally into his medicine. Dr Saggebou is subconsciously considered as one half professional man and one half wizard; and when the people think that the wizard half of him is not sufficiently potent in spells, they get to wizarding on their own account. Dr Saggebou himself represented the rising element in peasant society. It illustrates sufficiently the gap between English social ideals and those of France to say that Dr Saggebou's father had been the postmaster, his grandfather a labourer. His brother is the chemist ; and although professionally the two played into one another's hands, socially they were hardly upon speaking terms; not from inequality, for a chemist is as high in rank as a doctor, but from incompatibility of humour, especially, I believe, between the womenkind. 1 Though of course the peasant does not admit this; even when he is anticlerical, he is less often anti-Christian. An unconscious agnosticism covers the more advanced thinkers, an unconscious devil-worship comprises the rest. The doctor was a thick-set, over the stables. The doctor, roughly dressed man nearing too, planted the acacias in the the fifties, with a lumbago Place de Grifoultres. He alone limp. He had a forceful face, had perceived that N might eyes set in moulded lids, and be made into a show village an expanse of grey beard. for the summer, if only the The beard still gives an im- villagers would fit up accomportance in France. Incurably modation for visitors. There loquacious, Dr Saggebou had were empty reparable houses talked himself into the dis- by the dozen, but nobody beesteem of his fellow-villagers, stirred himself. Indeed, the so that his good qualities did Hôtel Quemac up in the Faunot get the tribute which they bourg, in opposition to the merited. He was a know-all. doctor, had cut its own throat There are beards which are only for jealousy. N vilaggressive and those which are lage is curious in that it exdefences, beards which are as tends in length without breadth. masked batteries and beards It is a street a mile long. The which are as smoke-screens. post-office is at the one exThe doctor's beard was of the tremity, and anybody living aggressive sort; you could not near the church has a twohave bebeavered him. Mostly, mile walk to register a letter. nowadays, beards are grown The doctor, being mayor at by timid men to hide behind, the time the post-office was so as fawns hide in jungles. The placed, wished to plant the doctor's beard had a wiry building near the market hanintensity, and suddenly it would gar-between it and the Hôtel gape like a hidden port-hole to Sestrol, in fact. But at this let out volleys and carronades the Faubourg revolted. The of assertion. The doctor was market, the mairie, and the no fool, but he did not per- post-office in the lower village,' ceive the limits of wisdom. it cried (though the marketHe dinned his cleverness into place is nearer to the Faubourg the peasant ears until his clever- than to the Church). "That ness went sour on them, and will make the lower village became an exaggerated folly. much too important. No; we He was mayor of the village must have the post-office." till the outbreak of war, to Monsieur M-, proprietor of which, doctors being too numer- the Hôtel Quemac, then offered ous, he was sent as a private. a large empty house almost He was at Verdun, and at the next to his hotel for a ridiculous end of the war retired as rent, and the parsimonious villieutenant. lage councillors, having overruled the mayor, planted the post-office where it now is in the hotel-keeper's empty house. Result, the hotel, which has only four bedrooms, turned It was to the doctor when he was mayor that we owed the acacia-trees which made a shady alley from the Hôtel Sestrol as far as our bedroom |