salle of the rez-de-chausee, as I passed, in altercation with a peasant who had just brought us in some loads of wood.  There is often, it seems to me, a sort of refrain in conversation, which one catches everywhere as one comes and goes.  Figure my astonishment when I heard from the lips of my good mother the same words with which that good-for-nothing Jacques Richard had made the profession of his brutal faith.  ‘Go!’ she cried, in anger; ’you are all the same.  Money is your god. De grosses pieces, that is all you think of in these days.’

‘Eh, bien, madame,’ said the peasant; ’and if so, what then?  Don’t you others, gentlemen and ladies, do just the same?  What is there in the world but money to think of?  If it is a question of marriage, you demand what is the dot; if it is a question of office, you ask, Monsieur Untel, is he rich?  And it is perfectly just.  We know what money can do; but as for le bon Dieu, whom our grandmothers used to talk about—­’

And lo! our gros paysan made exactly the same gesture as Jean Pierre.  He put up his shoulders to his ears, and spread out the palms of his hands, as who should say, There is nothing further to be said.

Then there occurred a still more remarkable repetition.  My mother, as may be supposed, being a very respectable person, and more or less devote, grew red with indignation and horror.

‘Oh, these poor grandmothers!’ she cried; ’God give them rest!  It is enough to make the dead rise out of their graves.’

‘Oh, I will answer for les morts! they will give nobody any trouble,’ he said with a laugh.  I went in and reproved the man severely, finding that, as I supposed, he had attempted to cheat my good mother in the price of the wood.  Fortunately she had been quite as clever as he was.  She went upstairs shaking her head, while I gave the man to understand that no one should speak to her but with the profoundest respect in my house.  ‘She has her opinions, like all respectable ladies,’ I said, ‘but under this roof these opinions shall always be sacred.’  And, to do him justice, I will add that when it was put to him in this way Gros-Jean was ashamed of himself.

When I talked over these incidents with my wife, as we gave each other the narrative of our day’s experiences, she was greatly distressed, as may be supposed.  ’I try to hope they are not so bad as Bonne Maman thinks.  But oh, mon ami!’ she said, ’what will the world come to if this is what they really believe?’

‘Take courage,’ I said; ’the world will never come to anything much different from what it is.  So long as there are des anges like thee to pray for us, the scale will not go down to the wrong side.’