IFY THE CHOIR WALLS."--SENEZ.]

Leaving the interior, where a solitary peasant knelt in prayer, the
traveller saw side-walls bare as the mountains round about, the squat
tower that rises just above the roof, and coming to the apse-end he
found the presbytery garden. From the garden, beyond the fallen gate, he
saw the church as the Cure saw it, the three round apses with their
little columns, the smaller decorative arches of the cornices, the
pointed roof, and between branches full of apple blossoms, the softened
lines of the low square tower. Here, trespassing, the Cure found him.
And after they had walked about the town, and talked the whole day long
of the great world which lay so far beyond, they went into the little
garden as the sun was going down, and fell to musing over coffee cups.
The priest was first to speak.

"Perhaps, buried under those old church walls, lie proofs of our early
history, the stones of some old Temple, or statues of its gods; for we
were once Sanitium, a Roman city in a country of six Roman roads.
Perhaps all around us were great monuments of pagan wealth, a Mausoleum
near these bare old rocks like that which stands in loneliness near
Saint-Remy, Villas, Baths, or Triumphal Arches."

The keen eyes softened, as he continued in gentle irony, "Down in this
little valley of the Asse de Blieux, our town seems far away from any
scene in which the great ones of earth took part. Although I know that
it is true, it often seems to me a legend that the gay and gallant
Francis I, rushing to a mad war, stopped on his way to injure us; and
that four hundred years ago a band of Huguenots raved around our old
Cathedral, and tried to pull it to the ground."

"And do you think it can be true," the traveller asked, "that Bishops
held mysterious prisoners in that tower for most dreary lengths of
time?"

[Illustration: "BETWEEN BRANCHES FULL OF APPLE-BLOSSOMS, THE CHURCH AS
THE CURE SAW IT."--SENEZ.]

The Cure smiled, and shook his white head. "That is a story which the
peasants tell,--an old tradition of the land. It may be true, since
priests are mortal men and doubtless dealt with sinners." He smiled
indulgently. "Through the many years I have been here, I have often
wondered about all these things, but it is seldom I can speak my
thoughts. Sometimes when I am here alone, I lose the sense of present
things and seem to see the phantoms of the past. Then the dusk comes on,
as it is coming now; the night b