_'The inward, steady righteousness of Jesus is another thing than all the contrived devotion of poor superstitious man.... True worship is an inward work; the soul must be touched and raised in its heavenly desires by the heavenly Spirit.... So that souls of true worshippers see God: and this they wait, they pant, they thirst for.'_ _'Worship is the supreme act of man's life.'_ XXXI. HOW A FRENCH NOBLE BECAME A FRIEND Now we come to a Saint who had a life so full of adventures that a book twice as big as this one would be needed to contain the stories that might be told about him alone. Unlike any of the other 'Quaker Saints' in this book, he was by birth a Frenchman and came of noble family. His name was Etienne de Grellet. He was born nearly a century after the death of George Fox; but he probably did not know that such a person had ever existed, never even heard Fox's name, until long after he was grown up. If Etienne de Grellet, the gay young nobleman of the French court, had been told that his story would ever be written in a book of 'Quaker Saints' he would, most likely, have raised his dark eyebrows and have looked extremely surprised. '_Quakere? Qu'est-ce que c'est alors, Quakere? Quel drole de mot! Je ne suis pas Quakere, moi!_' he might have answered, with a disdainful shrug of his high, narrow, aristocratic French shoulders. Yet here he is after all! * * * * * Etienne de Grellet was born at Limoges in France, in the year 1773. His childhood was passed in the stormy years when the cloud was gathering that was to burst a little later in the full fury of the French Revolution. His father, Gabriel de Grellet, a wealthy merchant of Limoges, was a great friend and counsellor of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. As a reward for having introduced into the country the manufacture of finer porcelain than had ever before been made in France he was ennobled by the king, whom he often used to attend in his private chapel. Limoges china is still celebrated all over the world; and at that time the most celebrated of its china-makers was M. de Grellet, the king's friend. Naturally the sons of this successful merchant and nobleman were brought up in great luxury. Etienne and his brothers were not sent to a school, but had expensive tutors to teach them at home. Their parents wanted their children to be well educated, honourable, straightforward, generous, and kind; to possess not only accomplishments but good qualities. Yet Etienne felt, when he looked back in later days, that something had been left out in their education that was, perhaps, the most important thing of all.