old woman obliged
us to sit down in front of her chalet, cheerfully explaining that she
had just been burned out, and that the shed in which she had found a
shelter was not fit for us to enter. She would take no refusal of her
offer to fetch us grapes, and ran all the way to and from her vineyard
on the opposite hillside, returning in an incredibly short time,
scarcely out of breath, and carrying a basket heavy with great white
and purple clusters. As she stood watching with delight our appreciation
of her produce--the only sweet and luscious grapes, by the way, that we
found throughout the autumn in that land of vines--she talked frankly of
her religious vicissitudes, summing up as follows: "The priests used to
say to me that I had turned Protestant because that is an easier
religion than the Roman Catholic. But I have not found it so at all. _Il
est beaucoup plus facile de me confesser que de me corriger._" Presently
another woman came up the hill, bending painfully under the weight of
two water-pails hanging from the ends of a yoke that rested on her
shoulders. "Ah," said our hostess, "if they would but let us build the
aqueduct, we should not have that ugly work to do." And then we learned
that among the small minority of Roman Catholics left in the village, to
care for whom, as soon as it was found a wolf had entered the fold, a
priest arrived promptly enough, there prevail the wildest superstitions
concerning the Protestants. Among many improvements introduced by the
latter an aqueduct had been planned to furnish the hamlet with wholesome
water. The project was defeated by the opposition of the Roman
Catholics, who considered it a scheme for poisoning them _en masse_. It
was here that we heard for the first time the epithet Huguenots applied
as a term of reproach and derision to the Protestants. Afterward, in
regions where Protestants have a history of centuries, we found it
commonly used in the same way.

Our visit to Notre Dame des Commiers was like reading a living page of
early Reformation history, and the whole neighborhood made a fitting
stage for such a reproduction. Some six or seven miles from Grenoble we
passed the restored but still, in parts at least, historic chateau of
Lesdiguieres at Vizille. Nearer our mountain-village we stopped to
admire an ivy-covered bit of tower-ruin, associated by a grim tradition
with the same Dauphine hero. A prisoner confined here by the apostate
constable had, says the le