l
one fine day, walked without warning into their midst, as he might have
walked into 'a flock of sheep in a plain,' and found some asleep and some
awake and psalm-singing. A traitor had need of no recommendation to
insinuate himself among their ranks, beyond 'his faculty of singing
psalms'; and even the prophet Salomon 'took him into a particular
friendship.' Thus, among their intricate hills, the rustic troop
subsisted; and history can attribute few exploits to them but sacraments
and ecstasies.

People of this tough and simple stock will not, as I have just been
saying, prove variable in religion; nor will they get nearer to apostasy
than a mere external conformity like that of Naaman in the house of
Rimmon. When Louis XVI., in the words of the edict, 'convinced by the
uselessness of a century of persecutions, and rather from necessity than
sympathy,' granted at last a royal grace of toleration, Cassagnas was
still Protestant; and to a man, it is so to this day. There is, indeed,
one family that is not Protestant, but neither is it Catholic. It is
that of a Catholic cure in revolt, who has taken to his bosom a
schoolmistress. And his conduct, it is worth noting, is disapproved by
the Protestant villagers.

'It is a bad idea for a man,' said one, 'to go back from his
engagements.'

The villagers whom I saw seemed intelligent after a countrified fashion,
and were all plain and dignified in manner. As a Protestant myself, I
was well looked upon, and my acquaintance with history gained me further
respect. For we had something not unlike a religious controversy at
table, a gendarme and a merchant with whom I dined being both strangers
to the place, and Catholics. The young men of the house stood round and
supported me; and the whole discussion was tolerantly conducted, and
surprised a man brought up among the infinitesimal and contentious
differences of Scotland. The merchant, indeed, grew a little warm, and
was far less pleased than some others with my historical acquirements.
But the gendarme was mighty easy over it all.

'It's a bad idea for a man to change,' said he; and the remark was
generally applauded.

That was not the opinion of the priest and soldier at Our Lady of the
Snows. But this is a different race; and perhaps the same
great-heartedness that upheld them to resist, now enables them to differ
in a kind spirit. For courage respects courage; but where a faith has
been trodden out, we may l