devout
congregation. With Europe constantly in their minds, they were
bewildered to find the worshippers not chiefly old and young women, but
men also of all ages and of every degree, from the neat peasant in
his Sabbath-day best to the modish young Quebecker, who spread his
handkerchief on the floor to save his pantaloons during supplication.
There was fashion and education in large degree among the men, and there
was in all a pious attention to the function in poetical keeping with
the origin and history of a city which the zeal of the Church had
founded.

A magnificent beadle, clothed in a gold-laced coat aid bearing a silver
staff, bowed to them when they entered, and, leading them to a pew,
punched up a kneeling peasant, who mutely resumed his prayers in the
aisle outside, while they took his place. It appeared to Isabel very
unjust that their curiosity should displace his religion; but she
consoled herself by making Basil give a shilling to the man who,
preceded by the shining beadle, came round to take up a collection.
The peasant could have given nothing but copper, and she felt that this
restored the lost balance of righteousness in their favor. There was
a sermon, very sweetly and gracefully delivered by a young priest of
singular beauty, even among clergy whose good looks are so notable as
those of Quebec; and then they followed the orderly crowd of worshippers
out, and left the cathedral to the sacristan and the odor of incense.

They thought the type of French-Canadian better here than at Montreal,
and they particularly noticed the greater number of pretty young girls.
All classes were well dressed; for though the best dressed could not be
called stylish according to the American standard, as Isabel decided,
and had only a provincial gentility, the poorest wore garments that were
clean and whole. Everybody, too, was going to have a hot Sunday dinner,
if there was any truth in the odors that steamed out of every door and
window; and this dinner was to be abundantly garnished with onions, for
the dullest nose could not err concerning that savor.

Numbers of tourists, of a nationality that showed itself superior to
every distinction of race, were strolling vaguely and not always
quite happily about; but they made no impression on the proper local
character, and the air throughout the morning was full of the sentiment
of Sunday in a Catholic city. There was the apparently meaningless
jangling of bells, with