se Quercynois, unless it had a voice matching in some
sort with their own. Another piece of furniture that pleases me,
because it is of shining copper, which always throws a homely warmth
into a room, is a large basin fixed upon a stand against the wall,
with a little cistern above it, also of copper. It is intended for
washing the hands by means of a fillet of water that is set running by
turning the tap. In this dry part of the world water has to be used
sparingly, and, indeed, there is very little wasted upon the body.
Everybody who has travelled in Guyenne must be familiar with the
article of household furniture just described. Every young wife
piously provides herself with one, together with a warming-pan; for
the old domestic ideas are religiously handed down here from mother to
daughter. But I must shorten this 'journey round my room,' so little
in the manner of Le Maistre.

Most of the furniture was once the property of a priest, and would be
still if he were alive. The good man is gone where even the voices of
the Figeacois cannot reach him; but he has left abundant traces of his
piety behind him. The walls of these rooms are almost covered by them.
I cannot help being edified, for I am unable to look upon anything
that approaches the profane.

When I grow thoughtful over all these works of art and _objets de
piete_--engravings, lithographs, statuettes, crucifixes, crosses
worked in wool, stables of Bethlehem, little holy-water stoops, and
the faded photographs belonging to the early period of the art
(portraits, no doubt, of brothers, sisters, nephews, and nieces, all
revealing that air of rusticity in Sunday clothes which is not to be
mistaken)--I have before me the whole story of a simple life,
surrounding itself year after year with fresh emblems and tokens of
the hope that reaches beyond the grave, and the affections of nature
that become woven on this side of it, and which mingle joy and sorrow
even in the cup of a village priest.

It is in these quiet, provincial places, where existence goes on in
the old-fashioned, humdrum way, that people take care of their
household property, and respect the sentiment that years lay up in it:
they hand it down to the next generation as they received it. Little
objects of common ornament, of religious or intellectual pleasure,
thus preserved, throw in course of time a vivid light on human
changes.

And it is this vivid light that I am now feeling in these dim room