I am going to-morrow on a pilgrimage.  I always wanted to be a pilgrim, and I have decided to start early to-morrow to the shrine of Notre Dame de Liesse.  Do you know what Liesse is?  It is an old word for joy.  I suppose the same as Letizia, Laetitia.  I just heard to-night of the shrine or chapel, by chance, as you would say, from the sweet woman of the auberge, who wants me to live always at Berneval.  She says Notre Dame de Liesse is wonderful, and helps everyone to the secret of joy—­I do not know how long it will take me to get to the shrine, as I must walk.  But, from what she tells me, it will take at least six or seven minutes to get there, and as many to come back.  In fact the chapel of Notre Dame de Liesse is just fifty yards from the Hotel.  Isn’t it extraordinary?  I intend to start after I have had my coffee, and then to bathe.  Need I say that this is a miracle?  I wanted to go on a pilgrimage, and I find the little grey stone chapel of Our Lady of Joy is brought to me.  It has probably been waiting for me all these purple years of pleasure, and now it comes to meet me with Liesse as its message.  I simply don’t know what to say.  I wish you were not so hard to poor heretics,[10] and would admit that even for the sheep who has no shepherd there is a Stella Maris to guide it home.  But you and More, especially More, treat me as a Dissenter.  It is very painful and quite unjust.

Yesterday I attended Mass at 10 o’clock and afterwards bathed.  So I went into the water without being a pagan.  The consequence was that I was not tempted by either sirens or mermaidens, or any of the green-haired following of Glaucus.  I really think that this is a remarkable thing.  In my Pagan days the sea was always full of Tritons blowing conchs, and other unpleasant things.  Now it is quite different.  And yet you treat me as the President of Mansfield College; and after I had canonised you too.

Dear boy, I wish you would tell me if your religion makes you happy.  You conceal your religion from me in a monstrous way.  You treat it like writing in the Saturday Review for Pollock, or dining in Wardour Street off the fascinating dish that is served with tomatoes and makes men mad.[11] I know it is useless asking you, so don’t tell me.

I felt an outcast in Chapel yesterday—­not really, but a little in exile.  I met a dear farmer in a corn field and he gave me a seat on his banc in church:  so I was quite comfortable.  He now visits me twice a day, and as he has no children, and is rich, I have made him promise to adopt three—­two boys and a girl.  I told him that if he wanted them, he would find them.  He said he was afraid that they would turn out badly.  I told him everyone did that.  He really has promised to adopt three orphans.  He is now filled with enthusiasm at the idea.  He is to go to the Cure and talk to him.  He told me that his own father had fallen down in a fit one day as they were talking together, and that he had caught him in his arms, and put him to bed, where he died, and that he himself had often thought how dreadful it was that if he had a fit there was no one to catch him in his arms.  It is quite clear that he must adopt orphans, is it not?