used to argue with me by the half-hour about my heresy, until
she grew quite flushed. I have heard the reverse process going on
between a Scots-woman and a French girl; and the arguments in the two
cases were identical. Each apostle based her claim on the superior
virtue and attainments of her clergy, and clinched the business with a
threat of hell-fire. "_Pas bong pretres ici_," said the Presbyterian,
"_bong pretres en Ecosse_." And the postmaster's daughter, taking up the
same weapon, plied me, so to speak, with the butt of it instead of the
bayonet. We are a hopeful race, it seems, and easily persuaded for our
good. One cheerful circumstance I note in these guerrilla missions, that
each side relies on hell, and Protestant and Catholic alike address
themselves to a supposed misgiving in their adversary's heart. And I
call it cheerful, for faith is a more supporting quality than
imagination.

Here, as in Scotland, many peasant families boast a son in holy orders.
And here also, the young men have a tendency to emigrate. It is
certainly not poverty that drives them to the great cities or across the
seas, for many peasant families, I was told, have a fortune of at least
40,000 francs. The lads go forth pricked with the spirit of adventure
and the desire to rise in life, and leave their homespun elders
grumbling and wondering over the event. Once, at a village called
Laussonne, I met one of these disappointed parents: a drake who had
fathered a wild swan and seen it take wing and disappear. The wild swan
in question was now an apothecary in Brazil. He had flown by way of
Bordeaux, and first landed in America, bare-headed and barefoot, and
with a single halfpenny in his pocket. And now he was an apothecary!
Such a wonderful thing is an adventurous life! I thought he might as
well have stayed at home; but you never can tell wherein a man's life
consists, nor in what he sets his pleasure: one to drink, another to
marry, a third to write scurrilous articles and be repeatedly caned in
public, and now this fourth, perhaps, to be an apothecary in Brazil. As
for his old father, he could conceive no reason for the lad's behaviour.
"I had always bread for him," he said; "he ran away to annoy me. He
loved to annoy me. He had no gratitude." But at heart he was swelling
with pride over his travelled offspring, and he produced a letter out of
his pocket, where, as he said, it was rotting, a mere lump of paper
rags, and waved it glorio