was the _piece de resistance_. The girl
wore it as the Maid herself, and sat the horse without faltering,
despite the _nonos_ and the heat. It was a wonderful day for Joan
and for the Marquesas."

He sat for a moment lost in the vision.

"So it was all as you had planned?"

"_Mon ami_, it was not I, but Joan herself, to whom all honor belongs.
There was a moment--Captain Capriata had taken absinthe with his
morning _popoi_, and was unsteady. He stumbled. I called to him to
breathe a prayer to his patron saint--he is of Ajaccio in
Corsica--and to call upon Joan for aid. He straightened up at once,
after one fall, and bore the white banner of the Maid in good style
from the mission to the deserted inn by the leper-house.

"We had three superb feasts, one on each day of the fete. We had
speeches and songs, three masses a day to accommodate all, four
first communicants, and two marriages. I will tell you, though it
may be denied by the commercial missionaries, that five protestants
attended and recanted."

Pere Simeon's eyes flashed as he recalled those memorable days. He
fell into a reverie, scratching his legs after the _nonos_ and
letting his cigarette go out.

I arose to depart. He must go to Huapu with the chief, who was again
at the door,

"And did the fete help the parish?" I asked with that bromidic zeal
to please that so often discloses the fly just when the ointment's
smell is sweetest.

"Alas!" he replied, with a sorrowful shake of his beard. "Even the
girl who had worn the white armor leaped from the mast of a ship to
escape infamy and was drowned. Yet there was grandeur of sacrifice in
that. But for the others, they die fast, too. Some day the priest
will be alone here without a flock."

He picked up a garment or two, placed the Holy Sacrament with pious
care in his breast, and we walked together through the mournful and
decaying village, passing a few melancholy natives.

I said to Pere Simeon as he stepped into the canoe, "You are like a
shepherd who pursues his sheep wherever they may wander, to gather
them into the fold at last."

"_C'est vrai_," he smiled sadly. "The bishop himself had to go to
Hiva-oa from here, because there were really not enough people left
alive for the seat of his bishopric. At least, there will be some
here when I die, for I am old. Ah, thirty years ago, when I came here,
there were souls to be saved! Thousands of them. But I love the last
one. There are still a hund