day Neff met an old man
near Mens, who recounted to him the story of the persecutions which
his parents and himself had endured, and he added: "In those times
there was more zeal than there is now; my father and mother used to
cross mountains and forests by night, in the worst weather, at the
risk of their lives, to be present at divine service performed in
secret; but now we are grown lazy: religious freedom is the deathblow
to piety."

An hour's walking brought us to the principal hamlet of the commune,
formerly called Fressinieres, but now known as Les Ribes, occupying a
wooded height on the left bank of the river. The population is partly
Roman Catholic and partly Protestant. The Roman Catholics have a
church here, the last in the valley, the two other places of worship
higher up being Protestant. The principal person of Les Ribes is M.
Baridon, son of the Joseph Baridon, receiver of the commune, so often
mentioned with such affection in the journal of Neff. He is the only
person in the valley whose position and education give him a claim to
the title of "Monsieur;" and his house contains the only decent
apartment in the Val Fressinieres where pastors and visitors could be
lodged previous to the erection, by Mr. Freemantle, of the pleasant
little parsonage at Palons. This apartment in the Baridons' house Neff
used to call the "Prophet's Chamber."

Half an hour higher up the valley we reached the hamlet of Violens,
where all the inhabitants are Protestants. It was at this place that
Neff helped to build and finish the church, for which he designed the
seats and pulpit, and which he opened and dedicated on the 29th of
August, 1824, the year before he finally left the neighbourhood.
Violens is a poor hamlet situated at the bottom of a deep glen, or
rocky abyss, called La Combe; the narrow valleys of Dauphiny, like
those of Devon, being usually called combes, doubtless from the same
original Celtic word _cwm_, signifying a hollow or dingle.

A little above Violens the valley contracts almost to a ravine, until
we reach the miserable hamlet of Minsals, so shut in by steep crags
that for nine months of the year it never sees the sun, and during
several months in winter it lies buried in snow. The hamlet consists
for the most part of hovels of mud and stone, without windows or
chimneys, being little better than stables; indeed, in winter time,
for the sake of warmth, the poor people share them with their cattle.
How t