extraordinary? I intend to start after I have had my coffee, and then to
bathe. Need I say that this is a miracle? I wanted to go on a
pilgrimage, and I find the little grey stone chapel of Our Lady of Joy
is brought to me. It has probably been waiting for me all these purple
years of pleasure, and now it comes to meet me with Liesse as its
message. I simply don't know what to say. I wish you were not so hard to
poor heretics,[10] and would admit that even for the sheep who has no
shepherd there is a Stella Maris to guide it home. But you and More,
especially More, treat me as a Dissenter. It is very painful and quite
unjust.

Yesterday I attended Mass at 10 o'clock and afterwards bathed. So I went
into the water without being a pagan. The consequence was that I was not
tempted by either sirens or mermaidens, or any of the green-haired
following of Glaucus. I really think that this is a remarkable thing. In
my Pagan days the sea was always full of Tritons blowing conchs, and
other unpleasant things. Now it is quite different. And yet you treat me
as the President of Mansfield College; and after I had canonised you
too.

Dear boy, I wish you would tell me if your religion makes you happy. You
conceal your religion from me in a monstrous way. You treat it like
writing in the _Saturday Review_ for Pollock, or dining in Wardour
Street off the fascinating dish that is served with tomatoes and makes
men mad.[11] I know it is useless asking you, so don't tell me.

I felt an outcast in Chapel yesterday--not really, but a little in
exile. I met a dear farmer in a corn field and he gave me a seat on his
banc in church: so I was quite comfortable. He now visits me twice a
day, and as he has no children, and is rich, I have made him promise to
adopt _three_--two boys and a girl. I told him that if he wanted them,
he would find them. He said he was afraid that they would turn out
badly. I told him everyone did that. He really has promised to adopt
three orphans. He is now filled with enthusiasm at the idea. He is to go
to the _Cure_ and talk to him. He told me that his own father had fallen
down in a fit one day as they were talking together, and that he had
caught him in his arms, and put him to bed, where he died, and that he
himself had often thought how dreadful it was that if he had a fit there
was no one to catch him in his arms. It is quite clear that he must
adopt orphans, is it not?

I feel that Berneval is to be my ho