ecrit la-dessus." If this had been intended as a literary
criticism, it might possibly have been justified, but seeing that it was
offered by a man who could not read, there was something in the frank
imbecility of it which disarmed me, and I daresay that the shout of
laughter with which I received it was just as incomprehensible to the
man as the rage with which I had fallen upon him only a moment earlier.

When I first took up my residence in that little Belgian village, I
mistook it for an Arcadia, but a more intimate knowledge of it and the
acquaintanceship I formed with the village doctor and the _doyen_ of the
little local cathedral served to undeceive me. It was full of poverty
and of all the more sordid forms of vice which everywhere seem
inseparable from physical distress and overcrowding. I taught both the
medico and the cleric to appreciate the flavour of Scotch whisky, and
on many a score of winter nights I used to sit and listen to them whilst
they engaged in long discussions on the Christian faith. The venerable
_doyen_ laboured hard to convince the doctor, who was an Agnostic of the
aggressive type. "La religion," said the latter, on one occasion, "est
une bonne et belle chose pour les femmes, les enfants et les imbeciles,"
but in spite of their antagonism in this respect, they worked together
with a devotion which was beyond praise amongst their poor. The priest
used to tell the doctor that he would have been the best of Christians
if he had only known it, and the doctor used to assure him in return
that he would have been the best of men if only his mind had never been
distorted by the fables of the Church. They met on the common ground
of benevolence and scholarship and I think they were a pair of the
most lovable old fossils I have ever known. The doctor was a man of
prodigious attainment and I often used to wonder what had induced such a
man to bury himself in such a place, until I learned that the genial old
bachelor bookworm had known a day of romance long before, and that the
lady of his choice had, on the very eve of marriage, resigned herself,
like Carlyle's Blumine, to wed someone richer. The romance spoiled his
career, but it was a godsend for his native village, where he laboured
till the day of his death, expending the whole of his professional
income in works of charity. He has no place in this simple record apart
from my affectionate remembrance of him and these remembrances may be
taken si