His dwelling
was a little frame cottage, standing on high pillars just inside a tall,
close fence, and reached by a narrow outdoor stair from the green batten
gate. It was well surrounded by crape myrtles, and communicated behind
by a descending stair and a plank-walk with the rear entrance of the
chapel over whose worshippers he daily spread his hands in benediction.
The name of the street--ah! there is where light is wanting. Save the
Cathedral and the Ursulines, there is very little of record concerning
churches at that time, though they were springing up here and there.
All there is certainty of is that Pere Jerome's frame chapel was some
little new-born "down-town" thing, that may have survived the passage of
years, or may have escaped "Paxton's Directory" "so as by fire." His
parlor was dingy and carpetless; one could smell distinctly there the
vow of poverty. His bedchamber was bare and clean, and the bed in it
narrow and hard; but between the two was a dining-room that would tempt
a laugh to the lips of any who looked in. The table was small, but
stout, and all the furniture of the room substantial, made of fine wood,
and carved just enough to give the notion of wrinkling pleasantry. His
mother's and sister's doing, Pere Jerome would explain; they would not
permit this apartment--or department--to suffer. Therein, as well as in
the parlor, there was odor, but of a more epicurean sort, that explained
interestingly the Pere Jerome's rotundity and rosy smile.

In this room, and about this miniature round table, used sometimes to
sit with Pere Jerome two friends to whom he was deeply attached--one,
Evariste Varrillat, a playmate from early childhood, now his
brother-in-law; the other, Jean Thompson, a companion from youngest
manhood, and both, like the little priest himself, the regretful
rememberers of a fourth comrade who was a comrade no more. Like Pere
Jerome, they had come, through years, to the thick of life's
conflicts,--the priest's brother-in-law a physician, the other an
attorney, and brother-in-law to the lonely wanderer,--yet they loved to
huddle around this small board, and be boys again in heart while men in
mind. Neither one nor another was leader. In earlier days they had
always yielded to him who no longer met with them a certain
chieftainship, and they still thought of him and talked of him, and, in
their conjectures, groped after him, as one of whom they continued to
expect greater things than of