ttes. No? Then signor would commence
with soup? Finally _potage au riz_ was selected out of the
embarrassment of riches poured at our feet by the enthusiastic G.

There being yet an hour to dinner, we ascended the few steps that
led to the summit of the hill on which the chapel is perched, a
marvel to all new-comers by the highway of the Lake. The door was
open, and we walked in. There was no light burning on the altar,
nor any water in the stone basin by the door. But there was all
the apparatus of worship--the gaudy toyshop above the grand altar,
the tiny side chapels, with their pictures of the dying Saviour,
and the confessional box, now thick with dust, and echoless of
sob of penitent or counsel of confessor. It was evidently a poorly
endowed chapel, the tinsel adornments being of the cheapest and
the candles of the thinnest. But in some past generation a good
Catholic had bestowed upon it an altarcloth of richest silk,
daintily embroidered. The colours had faded out of the flowers,
and the golden hue of the cloth had been grievously dimmed. Still
it remained the one rich genuine piece of workmanship in a chapel
disfigured by an overbearing hankering after paper flowers and
tinsel.

Early the next morning, whilst reposing under the magnificent
counterpane on the bed of chopped straw, I was awakened by hearing
the chapel bell ring for mass. I thought it must be the ghost of
some disembodied priest, who had come up through the darkness of
the night and the scarcely more luminous mist of the morning to
say a mass for his own disturbed soul. But, as I presently learned,
they were human hands that pulled the bell-rope, and a living
priest said mass all by himself in this lonely chapel whilst dawn
was breaking over a sleeping world.

I saw him some hours later sitting on the kitchen dresser, in the
sanctum where G. worked the mysteries of his art. He was resting
his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward, and had in his mouth
a large pipe, from which he vigorously puffed. I found him a very
cheerful old gentleman, by no means unduly oppressed with the
solemnity of this early mass in the lonely chapel. He lived down
at Barbeng, at the back of the hill, and had come up this morning
purely as a matter of business, and in partial fulfilment of a
contract entered into with one of his parishioners, whose husband
had been lost at sea whilst yet they were only twelve months
married. The widow had scraped together sufficie