would be better entertained there than in losing their money on the "little horses" in the stuffy casino. One evening there would be _projections lumineuses_, lantern-views of some of Our Lady's loveliest churches in France, or of the adventures of Joan of Arc, always with racy comments from his reverence; at another time a _conférence dialoguée_--the _vicaire_ (disguised in a red muffler) propounding agnostic conundrums from a pew, and the _curé_ answering them triumphantly from the pulpit, amid the plaudits of the congregation. He was a really excellent preacher; and his series of May sermons (which I insisted on my friends staying to hear) on "Les Péchés d'un homme d'affaires"--"de plaisir"--"d'État," and so on, were uncommonly practical as well as eloquent. {229} Pentecost, a great popular festival here, was kept with piety as well as merriment. The church was crowded with communicants from daybreak: later on the Cardinal Archbishop of Chambéry (whom I had the pleasure of meeting at breakfast at the presbytery) came and confirmed a large number of children who had made their first Communions on Ascension Day, after himself giving them a pretty searching public examination in the catechism. The afternoon and evening were devoted to festivity--dancing, gymnastics, military _retraites_, fireworks, illuminations, and a sort of Greenwich Fair; all very gay and harmless. The exigencies of my cure would not permit of distant expeditions to Anneçy, the Grande Chartreuse, etc., which I should have liked to visit. One interesting excursion I managed, to the Cistercian Abbey of Hautecombe, charmingly situated on a wooded promontory overlooking Lake Bourget. There was a resident community of thirty monks--the only one left in France under the then anti-Christian régime. They owed their exemption to the fact of their church being the Westminster Abbey of Savoy, containing some thirty tombs of the ancestors of the King of Italy, who had protested to the French Government against the expulsion of the guardians of the ashes of his ancestors; and so they were allowed to remain and serve God in peace. Unfortunately the fine twelfth-century church had been restored and re-restored in debased and florid fashion, a single chapel being all that was left intact of the pre-Revolution building.