ictures illustrating the
visions of Revelation, she had also several other precious relics. In
particular there was an old silver-clasped psalm book. It was extremely
tiny, like a toy-book, and in its day it must have been a marvel of the
printer's skill. It had been made in miniature thus they told me, so
that it could be easily hidden; at the time of the persecutions our
ancestors had often carried it about with them, concealed in their
clothing. There was also, in a paste-board box, a bundle of letters
written on parchment and marked Leyden or Amsterdam. Those written
between the years 1702 and 1710 were secured by a large wax seal stamped
with a count's coronet.

They were letters of our Huguenot ancestors, who, at the revocation of
the Edict of Nantes, had quitted their country, their home and their
dear ones, rather than abjure their faith. The letters had been written
to an old grandfather, a man too aged to go the way of the exile, who
was able, for some inexplicable reason, to remain unmolested in his
retreat upon the Island of Oleron. The letters testified to the fact
that the exiles had been submissive and respectful towards him to a
degree unknown in our day; the wanderers wrote asking his advice or his
consent before undertaking anything,--they even asked whether they might
wear a certain wig which was fashionable in Amsterdam at that time. They
spoke of their troubles, but without murmuring over them, with a truly
Christian resignation; their goods had been confiscated; they were
obliged to follow uncongenial trades in order to maintain themselves;
and they hoped, they said, with the aid of God always to make enough to
keep their children from starving.

Together with the respect that these letters inspired, they had also
the charm of age; it was a novel experience to enter into the life of
a bygone time, to know the inmost thoughts of those who had lived a
century and a half before me. And as I read them I was filled with
indignation against the Roman Church and Papal Rome, sovereign during
the many past centuries.--Surely it was she who was designated, in my
opinion at any rate, in that wonderful prophecy contained in Revelation:
"And the beast is a City, and its seven heads are Seven Hills on which
the woman sitteth."

My grandmother, always so austere and upright looking in her black
clothes, a type of a Huguenot woman, had been fearful for her own safety
during the Restoration, and although she nev