as if in some way or
other he felt that something was wrong and the world was a little out of
joint.

The priest looked up from his breviary. I should have thought he
understood English, only that his expression was rather comical than
reproving. I changed the subject and asked him a question. He
immediately closed his book and disposed himself for conversation We
found him an extremely intellectual and entertaining companion He
intimately knew both Brittany and the Breton character.

"I am not a Breton," he said in reply to a remark, "but I have lived
amongst them for thirty years. My early days were passed in Paris, and
to live in Paris up to the age of twenty-one is alone an education. My
father was X----, the great minister of his time. My grandfather went
through all the horrors of the French Revolution. He saw the beautiful
head of Marie Antoinette roll into the sawdust; heard the last footfall
of Charlotte Corday as she ascended the scaffold. He always said that
she was one of our most heroic martyrs, and as she walked patiently and
full of courage to her doom, the expression of a saint upon her
features. She was a saint, more worthy of canonisation than some who are
found in the calendar. He was a young man in those days, but its horrors
turned his hair white. Later on he was of great assistance to Napoleon,
although we have always been Royalists. But he held that it was well to
sacrifice private opinion for the good of one's country. It is of no use
fighting against the stream. Life is short, the present only is ours;
therefore why waste the present in vainly wishing for what is not?"

"And you have chosen neither sword nor portfolio?" we observed.

"'The lot is cast into the lap,'" he quoted. "I was to have been a
soldier, but just at that moment my sight failed. I was threatened with
blindness. Fortunately it passed off with time, and I now see better
than I did at twenty. But my career as a soldier was ended. I had no
taste for politics--the world is not sufficiently honest. It seems to me
a constant struggling for party and power rather than an earnest union
of hearts and minds to do one's very best for King and country, avienne
que pourra. And as extremes meet in human nature just as they sometimes
meet in the physical world, so I, throwing aside the sword, took to the
cowl. Yes; I withdrew from the world; I entered a monastery; the severe
order of the Trappists. But I made a mistake--I did not know mys