ither
face, and presently broke into a laugh.

"Ah!" said the doctor, as the three rose up, "you juz kip dad
cog-an'-bull fo' yo' negs summon."

Pere Jerome's eyes lighted up--

"I goin' to do it!"

"I tell you," said Evariste, turning upon him with sudden gravity, "iv
dad is troo, I tell you w'ad is sure-sure! Ursin Lemaitre din kyare
nut'n fo' doze creed; _he fall in love_!"

Then, with a smile, turning to Jean Thompson, and back again to Pere
Jerome:

"But anny'ow you tell it in dad summon dad 'e kyare fo' dad creed."

Pere Jerome sat up late that night, writing a letter. The remarkable
effects upon a certain mind, effects which we shall presently find him
attributing solely to the influences of surrounding nature, may find for
some a more sufficient explanation in the fact that this letter was but
one of a series, and that in the rover of doubted identity and
incredible eccentricity Pere Jerome had a regular correspondent.

CHAPTER V.

THE CAP FITS.

About two months after the conversation just given, and therefore
somewhere about the Christmas holidays of the year 1821, Pere Jerome
delighted the congregation of his little chapel with the announcement
that he had appointed to preach a sermon in French on the following
Sabbath--not there, but in the cathedral.

He was much beloved. Notwithstanding that among the clergy there were
two or three who shook their heads and raised their eyebrows, and said
he would be at least as orthodox if he did not make quite so much of the
Bible and quite so little of the dogmas, yet "the common people heard
him gladly." When told, one day, of the unfavorable whispers, he smiled
a little and answered his informant,--whom he knew to be one of the
whisperers himself,--laying a hand kindly upon his shoulder:

"Father Murphy,"--or whatever the name was,--"your words comfort me."

"How is that?"

"Because--'_Vae quum benedixerint mihi homines_!'"*

[*"Woe unto me, when all men speak well of me!"]

The appointed morning, when it came, was one of those exquisite days in
which there is such a universal harmony, that worship rises from the
heart like a spring.

"Truly," said Pere Jerome to the companion who was to assist him in the
mass, "this is a Sabbath day which we do not have to make holy, but only
to _keep_ so."

May be it was one of the secrets of Pere Jerome's success as a preacher,
that he took more thought as to how he should feel, than as to what he
s