inquired to whom he should go for the keys. They replied
that the captain of the gendarmerie had them. The captain was not far
off, for the cloister adjoining the church had been converted into a
barrack.

Roland went up to the captain's room and made himself known as
Bonaparte's aide-de-camp. The captain, with the placid obedience of a
subaltern to his superior officer, gave him the keys and followed behind
him. Sir John was waiting before the porch, admiring, in spite of the
mutilation to which they had been subjected, the admirable details of
the frontal.

Roland opened the door and started back in astonishment. The church was
literally stuffed with hay like a cannon charged to the muzzle.

"What does this mean?" he asked the captain of the gendarmerie.

"A precaution taken by the municipality."

"A precaution taken by the municipality?"

"Yes."

"For what?"

"To save the church. They were going to demolish it; but the mayor
issued a decree declaring that, in expiation of the false worship for
which it had served, it should be used to store fodder."

Roland burst out laughing, and, turning to Sir John, he said: "My
dear Sir John, the church was well worth seeing, but I think what this
gentleman has just told us is no less curious. You can always find--at
Strasburg, Cologne, or Milan--churches or cathedrals to equal the chapel
of Brou; but where will you find an administration idiotic enough to
destroy such a masterpiece, and a mayor clever enough to turn it into a
barn? A thousand thanks, captain. Here are your keys."

"As I was saying at Avignon, the first time I had the pleasure of seeing
you, my dear Roland," replied Sir John, "the French are a most amusing
people."

"This time, my lord, you are too polite," replied Roland. "Idiotic is
the word. Listen. I can understand the political cataclysms which have
convulsed society for the last thousand years; I can understand the
communes, the pastorals, the Jacquerie, the maillotins, the Saint
Bartholomew, the League, the Fronde, the dragonnades, the Revolution; I
can understand the 14th of July, the 5th and 6th of October, the 20th
of June, the 10th of August, the 2d and 3d of September, the 21st of
January, the 31st of May, the 30th of October, and the 9th Thermidor; I
can understand the egregious torch of civil wars, which inflames instead
of soothing the blood; I can understand the tidal wave of revolution,
sweeping on with its flux, that nothing can a