staff, which took root and threw out leaves and
flourished; and in time the plant, called _oder_ in the Languedoc, earned
so much veneration that Our Lady of Ambialet changed her title and became
Our Lady of the Oder.

This should be Ambialet's chief pride. But the monks of the Priory boast
rather of Ambialet's natural marvel--the river looped round their demesne.

"There is nothing like it, not in the whole of France!"

Pere Philibert said it with a wave of the hand. Brother Marc Antoine's
pig, stretched at ease with her snout in the cool grass, grunted, as who
should say _Bien entendu!_

We were three in the orchard below the Priory; or four, counting the pig--
who is a sow, by the way, and by name Zephirine. Brother Marc Antoine
looks after her; a gleeful old fellow of eighty, with a twinkling eye, a
scandalously dirty soutane, and a fund of anecdote not always sedate.
The Priory excuses him on the ground that his intellectuals are not
strong--he has spent most of his life in Africa, and there taken a couple
of sunstrokes. Zephirine follows him about like a dog. The pair are
mighty hunters of truffles, in the season.

"--Not in the whole of France!" repeated Pere Philibert with conviction,
nodding from the dappled shade of the orchard-boughs towards the river,
where it ran sparkling far below, by grey willows and a margin of
mica-strewn sand; not 'apples of gold in a network of silver,' but a
landscape all silver seen through a frame of green foliage starred with
golden fruit.

The orchard-gate clicked behind us. Brother Marc Antoine, reclining
beside the sow with his back against an apple-tree bole, slewed himself
round for a look. Pere Philibert and I, turning together, saw a man and a
woman approaching, with hangdog looks, and a priest between them--the
Cure of Ambialet--who seemed to be exhorting them by turns to keep up
their courage.

"Pouf!" said the Curd, letting out a big sigh as he came to a standstill
and mopped his brow. "Had ever poor man such trouble with his flock?--
and the thermometer at twenty-eight, too! Advance, my children--you
first, Maman Vacher; and Heaven grant the good father here may compose
your differences!"

Here the Cure--himself a peasant--flung out both hands as if resigning the
case. Pere Philibert, finger on chin, eyed the two disputants with an air
of grave abstraction, waiting for one or the other to begin. Brother Marc
Antoine leaned back against the apple-t